UC-NRLF 


B    3    SSD    b7T 


i 


BRIEF  F 


BACON  VS.  SHAKE 


'# 


EDWIN  REED 


JWCW  WOKSAMGEIR  /WEMOMM. 


Truth  is  like  a  Torch :  The  more  it 's  Shook,  it  Shines. 


BRIEF  FOR  PLAINTIFF 

BACON  vs.  SHAKESPEARE 


EDWIN  REED 

Author  of  "A  New  View  of  the  Temperance  Question" 
FIFTH  EDITION,  REVISED  AND  ENLARGED 


NEW-YORK 
PRINTED  AT  THE    DE  VINNE  PRESS 
1802 


Copyrighted,  1890  and  1891,  by  Edwin  Reed. 


TO 

2Ct)r  l^onorable  HtcljarD  Cutts  &t)annon 

ENVOY  EXTRAORDINARY  AND   MINISTER   PLENIPOTENTIARY 

OF    THE 

UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA 

TO   THE    REPUBLICS   OF 

NICARAGUA,  SALVADOR,  AND   COSTA   RICA 

THIS   BOOK   IS   INSCRIBED 

BY  THE   AUTHOR 


442796 


INTRODUCTORY. 


In  the  following  Brief  for  the  Plaintiff,  Bacon  7's.  Shake- 
speare, in  an  action  of  ejectment,  now  on  trial,  it  is  intended 
to  cite  such  facts  only  as  are  generally  agreed  upon  by  both 
parties  or  can  be  easily  verified,  and  in  the  main  to  let 
those  facts,  trumpet-tongued,  speak  for  themselves.  Like 
the  hnes  that  mark  the  sea-coast  on  our  maps,  each  sepa- 
rate proof  shades  off  in  a  thousand  fine  corroborating  cir- 
cumstances, which  are  often  very  interesting,  as  well  as 
important  for  a  full  knowledge  of  the  subject.  Mr.  Don- 
nelly's cipher  is,  for  the  present  purpose  at  least,  clearly 
beyond  soundings.  For  further  information,  the  reader  is 
respectfully  referred  to  the  works  of  Delia  Bacon,  Mrs. 
Pott,  Richard  Grant  White,  Dr.  Rolfe,  Judge  Holmes, 
Appleton  Morgan,  and  last,  but  not  least,  Ignatius  Don- 
nelly ;  not  to  mention  numerous  others  which  the  world,  it 
is  to  be  feared,  will  soon  be  too  small  to  contain. 


PREFACE    TO    SECOND    EDITION. 


We  may  say  of  improbabilities,  as  we  do  of  evils,  choose 
the  least. 

It  is  antecedently  improbable  that  the  Shakespeare  Plays, 
for  which  the  whole  domain  of  human  knowledge  was  laid 
under  contribution,  were  written  by  William  Shakespeare, 
for  he  was  uneducated. 

It  is  also  antecedently  improbable  that  Francis  Bacon, 
whose  name  for  nearly  three  hundred  years  has  been 
a  synonym  for  all  that  is  philosophical  and  profound, 
who  was  so  great  in  another  and  widely  different  field 
of  labor  that  he  gave  a  new  direction  for  all  future 
time  to  the  course  of  human  thought,  was  the  author  of 
them. 

And  yet,  to  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  men  we  must 
give  our  suffrage  for  the  crowning  honors  of  humanity. 

In  the  claim  for  Shakespeare,  the  improbability  is  so 
overwhelming  that  it  involves  very  nearly  a  violation  of  the 


8  PREFACE    TO    SECOND    EDITION. 

laws  of  nature.  No  man  ever  did,  and,  it  is  safe  to  say, 
no  man  ever  can,  acquire  knowledge  intuitively.  One  may 
be  a  genius  like  Burns,  and  the  world  be  hushed  to  silence 
while  he  sings;  but  the  injunction,  "  In  the  sweat  of  thy 
face'  shalt  thou  eat  thy  bread,"  is  as  true  of  intellectual 
as  it  is  of  physical  life,  everywhere.  The  fruit  of  the 
tree  of  knowledge  can  be  reached  only  by  hard  climb- 
ing, the  sole  instance  on  record  in  which  it  was  plucked 
and  handed  down  to  the  waiting  recipient  having  proved 
a  failure. 

In  the  case  of  Bacon,  however,  the  improbability  is  one 
of  degree  only.  It  is,  in  fact,  not  entirely  without  prece- 
dent. Fortune  has  more  than  once  emptied  a  whole  cor- 
nucopia of  gifts  at  a  single  birth.  What  diversity,  what 
beauty,  what  grandeur  in  the  personahty  of  Leonardo  da 
Vinci !  He  was  author,  painter,  sculptor,  architect,  musi- 
cian, civil  engineer,  inventor — and  in  each  capacity,  almost 
without  exception,  eminent  above  his  contemporaries.  His 
great  painting,  the  Last  Supper,  ranks  the  third  among  the 
products  in  this  branch  of  modern  art,  Raphael's  Madonna 
di  San  Sisto  and  Michael  Angelo's  Last  Judgment  being 
respectively,  perhaps,  first  and  second.  At  the  same  time, 
he  was  the  pioneer  in  the  study  of  the  anatomy  and  struct- 
iu"al  classification  of  plants ;  he  founded  the  science  of 
hydraulics  ;  he  invented  the  camera  obscura  ;  he  proclaimed 


PREFACE    TO    SECOND    EDITION.  9 

the  undulatory  theory  of  hght  and  heat ;  he  investigated  the 
properties  of  steam,  and  anticipated  by  four  centuries  its 
use  in  the  propulsion  of  boats ;  and  he  barely  missed  the 
great  discovery  which  immortalized  Newton.  Indeed,  we 
see  in  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  not  a  mountain  only,  but  a 
whole  range  of  sky-piercing  peaks  ! 

Another  illustrious  example  is  Goethe,  scarcely  inferior 
to  Bacon,  whatever  the  claims  made  for  the  latter,  in  the 
brilliancy  and  scope  of  his  powers.  As  a  poet,  Goethe  was 
a  star  of  the  first  magnitude,  a  blaze  of  light  in  the  literarj- 
heavens.  His  Faust  is  one  of  the  six  great  epic  poems 
of  the  world.  As  a  writer  of  prose  tiction  he  stands  in 
the  front  rank,  his  "  Wilhelm  Meister "  a  classic  side  by 
side  with  "  Ivanhoe,"  "  Middlemarch,"  and  "  The  Scarlet 
Letter."  By  a  singular  coincidence,  also,  as  compared  with 
Bacon,  he  was  one  of  the  master  spirits  of  his  age  in  the 
sphere  of  the  sciences.  An  evolutionist  before  Darwin,  he 
beheld,  as  in  a  vision,  what  is  now  becoming  clear,  the 
application  of  law  to  all  the  phenomena  of  nature  and  hfe. 
In  botany,  he  made  notable  additions  to  the  then  existing 
stock  of  knowledge  ;  and  throughout  the  vast  realm  of  biol- 
ogy he  not  only  developed  new  methods  of  inquiry,  but 
he  spread  over  it  the  glow  of  imagination,  without  which 
the  path  of  discovery  is  always  doubly  difificult  to  tread. 
In  the  light  of  precedents,  therefore,  the  claim  made  in 


lO  PREFACE    TO    SECOND    EDITION. 

behalf  of  Bacon  to  the  authorship  of  the  Plays  cannot  be 
discredited. 

The  reader  is  now  asked  to  measure  the  relative  improba- 
bilities in  question  for  himself. 

E.  R. 
A.NDOVER,  Mass.,  September  i,  1890. 


PREFACE   TO    FOURTH    EDITION. 


Nothing  is  more  tenacious  of  life  than  an  old  popular 
belief.  It  has  the  force  of  habit  which  the  pressure  of 
enlightened  opinion  through  successive  generations  alone 
can  overcome.  "  O  Lord,  thou  hast  taught  us,"  once 
prayed  a  good  deacon,  "  that  as  the  twig  is  bent,  the  tree's 
inclined  " — a  truth  drawn  from  the  Book  of  Nature,  and  as 
indubitable  as  though  the  writings  of  Pope  were  a  part  of 
the  sacred  canon.  Trees  that  have  unnatural  and 
uncomely  twists  in  their  branches,  even  if  growing  on 
Mount  Zion,  must  die  of  old  age,  or  be  cut  down,  before 
the  errors  of  arboriculture  will  cease  to  torment  us.  In- 
telligent and  conscientious  scholars  among  us  are  still 
defending  the  historical  accuracy  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis.  A  personal  devil  is  almost  as  potent  in  the  minds 
of  men  to-day  as  he  was  when  Martin  Luther  hurled  the  ink- 
stand at  his  head.  In  Germany,  how  often  one  hears  the 
polite  ejaculation  Gesuiidheit,  uttered  when  a  person  sneezes ! 


I  2  FRKFACE    TO    FOURTH    EDITION. 

Who  does  not  turn,  almost  instinctively,  to  see  in  which 
part  of  the  heavens  the  moon  quarters,  for  a  forecast  of  the 
weather,  though  that  luminary  is  as  innocent  of  any  inter- 
meddling with  that  branch  of  our  local  affairs  as  is  the 
most  distant  star  whicli  the  Lick  telescope  has  revealed  to 
us! 

And  the  worst  of  it  is,  these  old  beliefs  linger  in  the  noblest 
minds  to  the  last.  The  shadow  of  a  solar  eclipse,  sweep- 
ing over  the  earth,  lets  the  just  and  the  unjust,  the  wise 
and  the  foolish,  emerge  into  the  light  behind  it  indiscrimi- 
nately. E^vil  spirits  do  not  always  beg  the  privilege,  when 
they  find  themselves  about  to  be  exorcised,  of  taking  refuge 
in  a  herd  of  swine  and  leaping  over  a  precipice  into  the  sea. 
The  horrible  butcheries  of  the  Salem  Witchcraft,  marking 
the  close  of  that  delusion,  were  perpetrated  by  those  to 
whom  the  love  of  God  was  the  chief  end  of  man.  One  of 
the  last  judges  in  England  to  send  a  witch  to  the  gallows 
was  Time's  noblest  offspring,  Sir  Matthew  Hale.  The  last 
in  that  country  to  manumit  their  slaves  were  the  clergy. 
The  Garrison  mob  in  Boston  wore  broadcloth  on  their  backs 
and  all  the  current  virtues  in  their  hearts.  It  is,  therefore, 
no  criterion  of  a  good  cause  that  men  of  acknowledged 
abilities  and  culture  support  it,  nor  of  a  bad  cause  that 
such  men  denounce  it. 

Indeed,  truth  has  a  modest  wav  of  entering;  the  world 


PREFACE    TO    FOURTH    EDITION,  I3 

like  a  mendicant,  at  the  back  door.  Such  a  guest  is  sel- 
dom admitted,  on  his  first  arrival,  at  the  other  end  of  the 
house.  Poor  Copernicus  stood  there  shivering  in  the  cold 
thirteen  years  before  he  dared  even  to  lift  the  knocker. 
Every  great  rehgion  has  sprung  up  among  the  poor.  Every 
great  reform  owes  its  origin  to  the  oppressed.  Every  great 
invention  has  had,  like  the  founders  of  Rome,  a  wolf  for 
a  nurse.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  rebeUion  against  a 
king  of  poets  will  find  favor  among  the  nobility  that  sur- 
round his  throne.  The  high-priests  who,  with  unsandaled 
feet,  minister  in  a  sacred  temple  will  not  be  the  first  to 
despoil  the  idol  they  worship.  No  captain  in  that  "  fleet 
of  traffickers  and  assiduous  pearl-fishers  "  to  which  Carlyle, 
in  the  most  eloquent  sentence  he  ever  wrote,  refers,  will 
strike  his  colors  or  change  his  outfit  so  long  as  the  products 
of  his  industry  under  the  old  regime  are  bringing  him 
wealth.  And  what  to  him  are  winds  and  waves,  or  any 
storm  of  criticism,  whose  barque  is  anchored  to  the 
theory  of  Inspiration  !  Showers  of  verbal  aerolites  on  the 
mimic  stage,  only  a  product  of  untaught  Nature ! 

Amid  the  turmoil  of  our  daily  life,  if  we  listen  reverently, 
we  may  hear  voices  crying  in  the  wilderness,  perhaps  the 
voice  of  a  woman,  alone  and  forsaken,  in  a  strange  city. 

"  No  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  wodd  hath  ever  lost." 


14  PREFACE    TO    FOfRTH    EDITION. 

From  the  banks  of  the  Missouri,  from  the  wheat-fields 
of  Minnesota,  from  far-off  Melbourne  at  the  antipodes, 
out  of  the  heart  of  humanity  somewhere,  a  response  in  due 
time  is  sure  to  come. 

K.  R. 

Anuuver,  M.vss.,  January  i,  1S9:. 


IN    THE    TRIBUNAL    OF    HISTORY. 


The  Author  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays. 

It  is  conceded  by  all  that  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare 
Plays  was  the  greatest  genius  of  his  age,  perhaps  of  any 
age,  and,  with  nearly  equal  unanimity,  that  he  was  a  man 
of  profound  and  varied  scholarship. 

I.  He  was  a  Hnguist,  many  of  the  Plays  being  based  on 
Greek,  Spanish,  and  Italian  productions  which  had  not  then 
been  translated  into  English.  Latin  and  French  were 
seemingly  as  famiUar  to  him  as  a  mother  tongue.  It  is 
thus  apparent  that  not  less  than  five  foreign  languages, 
living  and  dead,  were  included  in  his  repertory. 

Latin. — The  Comedy  of  Errors  yNZ.^  founded  \xi^ox\.\\iQ  Menachnii 
of  Plautus,  a  comic  poet,  who  wrote  about  200  B.C.  The  first 
translation  of  the  Latin  work  into  English,  so  far  as  known, 
was  made  in  1595,  subsequently  to  the  appearance  of  the  Shake- 


It)  I'.ACON    VS.    SHAKKSPKARK. 

spearc  play,  and  wiiliout  any  resemblance  to  it  "in  any  peculiar- 
ity of  language,  of  namcs.'or  of  any  other  matter,  however  slight." 

—  I  'erplanck. 

"His  frequent  use  of  Latin  derivatives  in  their  radical  sense 
shows  a  somewhat  thoughtful  and  observant  study  of  that  lan- 
guage."— Richard  Grant  White. 

Greek. —  Union  of  Atheiisw3.s  drawn  partly  from  Plutarch  and 
partly  from  Lucian,  the  latter  author  not  having  been  translated 
into  English  earlier  than  1638  (White),  fifteen  years  after  the  pub- 
lication of  the  play. 

Helena's  pathetic  lament  over  a  lost  friendship  in  Midsummer- 
Xight's  Dream  (HI.,  2j  had  its  prototype  in  an  untranslated  Greek 
poem  by  St.  Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  published  at  Venice  in  1504. 

—  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall,  Chap,  xxvii. 

Italian. — An  Italian  novel,  written  by  Giraldi  Cinthio  and  first 
printed  in  1565,  furnished  the  incidents  for  the  stor)'  of  Othello. 
The  author  of  the  play  "  read  it  probably  in  the  original,  for  no 
English  translation  of  his  time  is  known.'" — Geninus. 

"  He  was,  without  doubt,  quite  able  to  read  Italian." — Richard 
Grant  Jf'hit:\ 

French. — One  entire  scene  and  parts  of  others  in  Heni-y  V.  are 
in  French. 

Plovvden's French  Commentaries,  containing  the  celebrated  case 
of  Hales  vs.  Petit,  which  was  satirized  by  the  grave-diggers,  were 
translated  into  English  for  the  first  time  more  than  half  a  century 
after  Hamlet  was  written. 

Spanish. — The  poet  drew  some  of  his  materials  for  the  Tzvo  Gen- 
tlemen of  Verona  from  the  Spanish  romance  of  Montema)-or,  en- 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF,  I  7 

titled  the  Diana,  which  was  translated  into  English  in  1582,  the 
translation,  however,  not  being  printed  till  1598.  "  The  resem- 
blances are  too  minute  to  be  accidental."  (Halliwell-Phillipps.) 
As  the  play  was  produced  previously  to  1593,  it  follows  that  the 
author  read  either  the  translation  in  manuscript  or  the  Spanish 
original.  The  latter  supposition,  particularly  in  view  of  his  other 
linguistic  acquirements,  is  more  probable. 

An  unknown  play,  based  on  the  same  story  and  played  before 
the  Queen  in  1585,  was  doubtless  the  T'vo  Gentlemen  of  Verona  in 
an  earlier  form. 

The  Merchant  of  Venice  and  Cymbeline  were  also  indebted,  not 
only  for  much  of  their  respective  plots,  but,  in  some  instances,  for 
identical  passages,  to  works  not  then  in  English  dress. 

Gervinus,  one  of  the  ablest  of  the  Shakespearean  critics,  calls 
attention  to  two  of  the  Comedies  in  which  Latin,  French,  Spanish, 
and  Italian  words  and  sentences  abound,  and  ventures  to  suggest 
a  desire,  on  the  part  of  the  author,  to  exhibit  in  them  his  knoioledge 
of  foreign  languages. 

2.  He  had  intimate  acquaintance  with  ancient  and 
modem  Hterature,  numerous  authors,  from  the  age  of  Plato 
down  to  his  own,  being  drawn  upon  for  illustration  and 
imagery  in  the  composition  of  these  works. 

"  The  writer  was  a  classical  scholar.  Rowe  found  traces  in  him 
of  the  Electra  of  Sophocles  ;  Colman,  of  Ovid  ;  Pope,  of  Dares 
PhrA'gius  and  other  Greek  authors  ;  Farmer,  of  Horace  and  Virgil ; 
Malone,  of  Lucretius,  Statius,  Catullus,  Seneca,   Sophocles,  and 


1 8  ItACON    VS.    SIIAKKSTKAKK. 

Euripides  ;  Stecvens.of  Plautus  ;  Kniglit,  of  the  Antigone  o{  Sopho- 
cles ;  White,  of  the  Akestis  of  Euripides." — N^athaniel  Holmes. 

"  The  early  plays  exhibit  the  poet  not  far  removed  from  school 
and  its  pursuits  ;  in  none  of  his  later  dramas  docs  he  plunge  so 
deeply  into  the  remembrances  of  antiquity,  his  head  overflowing 
with  its  images,  legends,  and  characters.  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew, 
especially,  may  be  compared  with  the  First  Fiirt  of  Henry  I'l.  '  in 
the  manifold  ostentation  of  book-learning.'" — Get-iniis. 

Stapfer,  a  distinguished  French  critic,  intimates  that  in  his 
judgment,  some  of  the  plays  are  "  over-cumbered  with  learning, 
not  to  say  pedantic."  * 

3.    He  was  a  jurist,  with 

"a  deep  technical  knowledge  of  the  law," 

and  an  easy  familiarity  with 

"some  of  the   most  abstruse  proceedings  in   English  jurispru- 
dence."— Lord  Chief  Jitstiee  Campbell. 

His  fondness  for  legal  phrases  is  remarkable,  but  it  is 
still  more  reinarkable  that, 

"whenever  he  indulges  this  propensity,  he  uniformly  lays  down 
good  law." — Idevi. 


*  It  may  be  well  to  remark  that  Stapfer  and  White  are  unfriendly  witnesses, 
and  that  Gervinus  and  Verplanck  wrote  before  this  controversy  began.  Judge 
Holmes  is  our  senior  counsel,  but  wc  claim  the  right  at  this  hearing  to  put  him 
also  on  the  witness  stand.  His  work  on  the  .-)  uthorship  of  Shakespeare  fs  as  tem- 
perate in  its  judgments  as  it  is  philosophical  and  profound  in  general  treatment 
of  the  subject. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  1 9 

One  of  the  sonnets  (46)  is  so  intensely  technical  in  its 
phraseology  that, 

"without  a  considerable  knowledge  of  English  forensic  procedure, 
it  cannot  be  fully  understood." — Idem. 

"Among  these  [legal  terms],  there  are  some  which  few  but  a 
lawyer  would,  and  some  even  which  none  but  a  lawyer  could,  have 
written." — Franklin  Fiske  Heard. 

4.  He  was  a  philosopher. 

"  In  the  constructing  of  Shakespeare's  Dramas,  there  is  an  un- 
derstanding manifested  equal  to  that  in  Bacon's  Xovuin  Or^anum." 
— Carlyle. 

"  He  is  inconceivably  wise;  the  others  conceivably." — Emerson. 

"  From  his  works  may  be  collected  a  system  of  civil  and  eco- 
nomical prudence." — Dr.  Johnson. 

"  He  was  not  only  a  great  poet,  but  a  great  philosopher." — 
Coleridge. 

Thus  was  the  author's  mind  not  only  a  fountain  of 
inspiration  from  its  own  inimitable  depths,  but  enriched  in 
large  measure  with  the  stores  of  knowledge  which  the 
world  had  then  accumulated. 

"  An  amazing  genius  which  could  pervade  all  nature  at  a  glance, 
and  to  whom  nothing  within  the  limits  of  the  universe  appeared 
to  be  unknown." — IV/ialley. 


II. 

WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE. 


1 .  The  family  of  William  Shakespeare  was  grossly  illiter- 
ate. His  father  and  mother  made  their  signatures  with  a 
cross.  His  daughter  Judith,  also,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
seven,  could  not  write  her  name.  The  little  we  know  of 
his  own  youth  and  early  manhood  affords  presumptive 
proof  of  the  strongest  kind  that  he  was  uneducated. 

"  His  learning  was  very  little." —  Thomas  Fuller  s  Worthies,  1662. 

"In  him  we  find  all  arts  and  sciences,  all  moral  and  natural 
philosophy,  without  knowing  that  he  ever  studied  them." — 
Dryden. 

2.  The  Shakespeare  family  had  no  settled  or  uniform 
method  of  spelling  their  name.  More  than  thirty  different 
forms  have  been  found  among  their  papers,  on  their  tomb- 
stones, and  in  contemporaneous  public  records.  William 
wrote  it  Shakspere;  his  brother  Gilbert,  Shakespeir.  In  a 
mortgage  deed  given  by  the  corporation  of  London,  it  is 
Shakspcr  The  indorsement  on  an  indenture  between 
Shakespeare  a'nd  two  of  his  neighbors  in  Stratford  spells  it 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  21 

Shackspeare.  Among  other  forms  discovered  in  the  records 
of  the  family  are  the  following :  S/iaxpu?;  C/iacksper, 
Schakespeire,  Shagspere,  Shakaspeare,  Shaykspere,  and 
Schakespayr.  Patronymics  often  varied  at  that  time,  as 
they  do  now,  in  different  families  and  in  different  sections 
of  the  country,  but  here  the  variations  in  the  same  house- 
hold were  numerous  and,  apparently,  at  hap-hazard. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  a  singular  circumstance,  that  in  all  the 
forms  tabulated  by  Wise,  nineteen  hundred  and  six  in 
number,  the  one  appearing  on  the  title-pages  of  the  Plays 
and  Poems,  Shakespeare,  is  unique.  No  member  of  the 
family  in  any  part  of  the  kingdom  wrote  the  name  in  that 
way.      Literature  had  an  absolute  monopoly  of  it.* 

3.  Shakespeare's  handwriting,  of  which  we  have  live 
specimens  in  his  signatures  to  legal  documents,  was  not 
only  almost  illegible,  but  singularly  uncultivated  and  gro- 
tesque, wholly  at  variance  with  the  description  given  of  the 
manuscripts  of  the  Plays  in  the  preface  to  the  folio  edition 
of  1623.     The  editorial  encomium  was  in  these  words: 

"  His  mind  and  hand  went  together;  and  what  he  thought,  he 
uttered  with  that  easiness,  that  we  have  scarce  received  from  him 
a  blot  in  his  papers." 


*It  is  significant,  also,  that  in  some  of  the  quartos  first  published  the 
name  appears  with  a  hyphen,  thus,  Shakespeare^  as  though  to  distinguish  it 
in  another  slight  respect  from  that  of  the  actor. 


HACON    vs.    SHAKESPEARE. 


In  this  connection,  we  reproduce  the  five  autographs  of 
Shakespeare,  the  only  acknowledged  specimens  of  his  pen- 
manship in  existence,  in  facsimile: 


^ 


^^^^'Utx^*      c^L  r  ,*.  Z/T. .  ^s^i^^ 


^^^^r-' 


4.  Shakespeare  made  no  mention  of  any  literary  property 
in  his  will.  He  was  careful  to  specify,  among  other 
bequests,  his  "  second-best  bed,"  but  not  a  book,  not  a  copy 
of  one  of  his  own  books,  not  even  a  manuscript,  though 
such  immortal  dramas  as  Macbeth,  Tempest,  and  Julius 
Caesar  were  unpublished  at  the  time  of  his  death.* 

*  Counsel  on  the  other  side  attempt  to  meet  this  point  by  saying-  tiiat 
Shakespeare  had  sold  his  manuscripts  to  the  theatre  company  before  leaving 
London.  They  have  so  long  assumed  this  to  be  true  that  they  now  state  it 
unqualifiedly,  though  without  proof.  They  should  issue  instructions,  however, 
to  the  cicerone  at  Stratford,  who  informs  visitors  that  the  wicked  manuscripts 
were  destroyed,  after  Shakespeare's  death,  by  his  puritanical  children  ! 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  23 

5.  No  letter  written  by  him  has  come  down  to  us,  and 
but  two  addressed  to  him,  and  those  make  no  reference  to 
hterature.  An  inspection  of  his  autograph  is  alone  suffi- 
cient to  explain  the  paucity  of  his  correspondence,  if  not 
its  absolute  non-existence. 

6.  In  the  dedication  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  published 
in  1593,  Shakespeare  calls  that  poem  the  first  heir  of  his 
invention.  This  makes  it  ante-date  the  Plays.  Accord- 
ingly, Richard  Grant  White  sets  it  down  as  written  in 
1584-5,  before  Shakespeare  left  Stratford.  Furnivall, 
also,  assigns  it  to  the  same  early  date. 

The  Venus  and  Adonis  is  a  product  of  the  highest  cul- 
ture. It  is  prefixed  with  a  Latin  quotation  from  Ovid,  and 
is  written  throughout  in  the  purest,  most  elegant  and 
scholarly  English  of  that  day.  Hazlitt  compares  it  to  an 
ice-house,  "almost  as  hard,  as  glittering,  and  as  cold."  Is 
it  possible  that  in  a  town  where  seven  only  of  the  nineteen 
aldermen  could  write  their  names,  where  the  habits  of  the 
people  were  so  inconceivably  filthy  that  John  Shakespeare, 
father  of  William,  was  publicly  prosecuted  on  two  occa- 
sions for  defiling  the  street  in  front  of  his  house,  where  the 
common  speech  was  a  pafois  rude  to  the  verge  of  barba- 
rism, and  where,  probably,  outside  of  the  schools  and 
churches,  not  a  half  dozen  books,  as  White  admits,  were 
to  be  found  among  the  whole  population, — is  it  possible 


2A  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

that  in  sucli  a  town  a  lad  of  twenty  compo.sed  this  beauti- 
ful epic  ? 

7.  It  is  believed  that  Shakespeare  left  his  home  in  Strat- 
ford and  went  to  London  some  time  between  1585  and 
1587.  He  was  then  twenty-one  to  twenty-three  years  of 
age.  One  of  the  first  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays  to  be  pro- 
duced on  the  stage  was  Hamlet,  and  the  date  not  later  than 
1589.  It  was  founded  on  a  foreign  tragedy  of  which  no 
translation  then  existed  in  English.  As  first  presented,  it 
was  probably  in  an  imperfect  form,  having  been  subse- 
quently rewritten  and  enlarged  into  what  is  now,  perhaps, 
the  greatest  individual  work  of  genius  the  human  mind  has 
produced.  To  assume  that  Shakespeare,  under  the  circum- 
stances in  which  he  was  then  placed,* at  so  early  an  age, 
fresh  from  a  country  town  where  there  were  few  or  no 
books,  and  from  a  family  circle  whose  members  could  not 
read  or  write,  was  the  author  of  this  play,  would  seem  to 
involve  a  miracle  as  great  as  that  imputed  to  Joshua — in 
other  words,  a  suspension  of  the  laws  of  cause  and  effect.* 

*  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  original  Hamlet  was  by  another  author. 
This  supposition,  however,  encounters  an  improbability  of  its  own,  not  so 
great  as  the  one  mentioned  in  the  text,  but  still  fatal,  viz. :  that  a  playwright 
would  adopt  for  the  title  of  his  masterpiece  a  name  already  familiar  to  the 
public,  and  identified  in  the  same  age  with  the  same  subject.  No  absurd 
hypothesis  stands  in  Bacon's  way,  for  he  was  nearly  thirty  years  of  age  when 
Hamlet  was  first  played,  had  been  highly  educated  at  home  and  abroad,  and 
was  then  a  briefless  barrister  at  Gray's  Inn. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  25 

8.  The  end  of  his  career  was  as  remarkable  as  the  begin- 
ning. His  residence  in  London  extended  over  a  period  of 
twenty-five  years,  during  which  time,  according  to  popular 
belief,  he  wrote  thirty-seven  dramas,  one  hundred  and  fifty- 
four  sonnets,  and  two  or  three  minor  poems,  besides  accu- 
mulating a  fortune  the  income  of  which  has  been  estimated 
at  £1,000  (equivalent  in  our  time  and  in  our  money  to 
$25,000)  per  annum.  Such  an  instance  of  mental  fecundity 
the  world  has  never  seen,  before  or  since. 

In  161  o  or  thereabouts,  while  he  was  still  comparatively 
young  (at  the  age  of  forty-six),  he  retired  from  London 
and  passed  the  remainder  of  his  days  among  his  old  neigh- 
bors in  Stratford,  loaning  money  and  brewing  beer  for  sale. 
His  intellectual  life  seems  to  have  terminated  as  abruptly 
as  it  had  begun.  The  most  careful  scrutiny  fails  to  show 
that  he  took  the  slightest  interest  in  the  fate  of  the  plays 
left  behind  him,  or  in  his  own  reputation  as  the  author  of 
them.  Some  of  these  productions  were  still  in  manuscript, 
unknown  even  to  the  stage,  and  not  given  to  the  pubhc, 
either  for  fame  or  profit,  till  thirteen  years  after  his  retire- 
ment. Such  indifference  to  the  children  of  his  brain  and 
such  utter  seclusion  in  the  prime  of  his  manhood  from  the 
refinements  of  hfe  present  to  us  a  picture,  not  only  pain- 
ful to  contemplate,  but  one  that  stultifies  human  nature 
itself. 


J')  RACON    VS.    SHAKKSPEARE. 

9.  Our  surprises  do  not  cease  at  his  death.  On  the  heavy 
stone  slab  that  marks  his  grave  in  tlie  old  church  at  .Strat- 
ford, visitors  read  the  following  inscription  : 

"  Good  friend,  for  Jesus'  sake  forbear 
To  dig  the  dust  enclosed  here  : 
Blest  be  the  man  that  spares  these  stones, 
And  curst  be  he  that  moves  my  bones." 

These  lines  are  evidently  his  own,  for  the  imprecation 
contained  in  them  prevented  his  wife,  who  survived  him, 
from  being  laid  at  rest  by  his  side. 

10.  So  far  as  we  know,  Shakespeare  never  claimed  the 
authorship  of  the  Plays.  He  simply  permitted  his  name 
to  be  used,  doubtless  for  good  and  sufficient  reasons,  and 
in  accordance  with  a  not  unusual  custom  at  that  period,  on 
the  title-pages  of  fourteen  of  them  printed  in  his  life-time, 
though  they  all  (thirty-seven  in  number)  were  ascribed  to 
him  unmistakably  in  the  collected  editions  that  appeared 
after  his  death.  His  reticence  on  the  subject,  especially 
after  his  retirement  to  Stratford,  is  itself  a  presumptive 
proof  of  his  integrity  and  honor.  His  fellow-townsmen,  it 
is  probable,  never  witnessed  one  of  his  productions  on  the 
stage.  Neither  his  local  fame  (if  he  had  any)  as  a  dram- 
atist, nor  the  influence  of  his  wealth  and  po.sition  (if  ex- 
erted by  him)  overcame  their  repugnance  to  theatrical  rep- 
resentations, for  in  1602  the  board  of  aldermen  prohibited 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  27 

any  performance  of  the  kind  in  the  town  under  a  penalty 
of  ten  shiUings.  In  1612,  when  Shakespeare's  reputation 
among  his  neighbors  should  have  been  at  its  zenith,  the 
penalty  was  increased  to  ten  pounds.  The  key  to  the  situ- 
ation hes  in  his  stohdity,  or  in  his  sense  of  honor. 

1 1 .  The  references  to  Shakespeare,  direct  and  indirect, 
in  contemporaneous  hterature  (i  592-1616)  have  been  care- 
fully collated  and  published.  They  number  one  hundred 
and  twenty-five,  and  may  be  classified  as  follows :  those 
made  to  him  as  a  reputed  author  or  to  his  works,  one 
hundred  and  twenty ;  those  made  to  him  as  a  man,  five. 
The  citations  in  the  first  class  are,  of  course,  irrelevant  to 
our  purpose.  In  the  second,  we  find  statements  from  the 
following  named  persons :  Robert  Greene  and  Henry 
Chettle,  1592;  John  Manningham,  1601  ;  an  anonymous 
writer,  1605;  and  Thomas  Heywood,  161 2.  Greene  de- 
nounces Shakespeare  as  an  impostor  ;  Chettle  disclaims  the 
honor  of  a  personal  acquaintance  with  him  ;  Manningham 
makes  him  the  hero  of  an  amour ;  the  anonymous  writer 
(after  the  manner  of  such  writers)  calls  attention  to  his 
penurious  habits,  his  chronic  disregard  of  obligations,  and 
his  wealth ;  and  Heywood  is  indignant  because  two  of  his 
own  poems  had  been  published  by  a  piratical  printer  as 
Shake.speare's,  but  (he  affirms)  without  the  latter's  con- 
sent. 


28  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARK. 

Excepting  Ben  Jonson,*  and  apart  from  the  official  rec- 
ords of  baptism,  marriage  and  death,  of  transfers  of  prop- 
erty and  suits  at  law,  these  obscure  writers  tell  us  all  we 
know,  and  more  than  we  can  believe  to  be  true,  of  William 
Shakespeare,  the  man.  Not  a  word,  not  the  remotest  hint 
from  friend  or  foe  within  the  circle  of  his  acquaintance,  of 
a  transcendent  genius,  or,  indeed,  of  any  literarj'  ability 
whatever. 

"  I  cannot  marry  this  fact  lo  his  verse." — Einerson. 

"A  mere  fabulous  storj-,  a  blind  and  extravagant  error." — 
Schlegel. 

"  What'  arc  we  to  have  miracles  in  sport?  *  *  *  Does  God 
choose  idiots  by  whom  to  convey  divine  truths  to  man?" — Cole- 
ridge. 

*  For  Jonson's  testimony,  see  supra,  p.  43. 


III. 

FRANCIS    BACON. 


I.  Setting  aside  Shakespeare,  Bacon  was  the  most  origi- 
nal, the  most  imaginative,  and  the  most  learned  man  of  his 
time. 

"The  most  exquisitely  constructed  intellect  that  has  ever 
been  bestowed  on  any  of  the  children  of  men." — Macaulay. 

"The  great  glory  of  literature  in  this  island,  during  the  reign 
of  James,  was  my  Lord  Bacon." — Htane. 

"  Lord  Bacon  was  the  greatest  genius  that  England,  or  perhaps 
any  other  country,  ever  produced." — Pope. 

"The  glory  of  the  human  intellect." — De  Quincey. 

"  Crov/n  of  all  modern  authors." — Geo.  Sandys. 

"  He  possessed  at  once  all  those  extraordinarj'  talents  which 
were  divided  amongst  the  greatest  authors  of  antiquity.  He  had 
the  sound,  distinct,  comprehensive  knowledge  of  Aristotle,  with 
all  the  beautiful  lights,  graces,  and  embellishments  of  Cicero. 
One  does  not  know  which  to  admire  most  in  his  writings,  the 
strength  of  reason,  force  of  style,  or  brightness  of  imagination." 
— Addison. 


30  BACON    VS.    SHAKKSPEARE. 

"His  imagination  was  fiuitful  and  vivid;  a  temperament  of 
the  most  delicate  sensibility." — Mont<ii;u. 

"  He  belongs  to  the  realm  of  the  imagination,  of  eloquence, 
of  jurisprudence,  of  ethics,  of  metaphysics;  his  writings  have  the 
gravity  of  prose,  with  the  fervor  and  vividness  of  poetry." — 
ll\-lsh. 

"  Who  is  there  that,  hearing  the  name  of  Bacon,  docs  not 
instantly  recognize  everything  of  genius  the  most  profound,  of 
literature  the  most  extensive,  of  discoveni'  the  most  penetrating, 
of  observation  of  human  life  the  most  distinguishing  and  refined?" 
— Edmund  Btoki'. 

''  Shakespeare  and  the  seers  do  not  contain  more  expressive 
or  vigorous  condensations,  more  resembling  inspiration;  in 
Bacon,  they  are  to  be  found  everj-where." — Tainc. 

Addison,  referring  to  a  prayer  composed  by  Bacon,  says 
that  "  for  elevation  of  thought  and  greatness  of  expression 
it  seems  rather  the  devotion  of  an  angel  than  a  man." 

The  critics  all  concur  in  ascribing  to  Bacon  a  particu- 
larly powerful  poetic  faculty.  No  man  ever  had  an  imagi- 
nation, says  Macaulay,  "  at  once  so  strong  and  so  thor- 
oughly subjugated.  In  truth,  much  of  Bacon's  life  was 
passed  /'//  a  visionary  world,  amidst  things  as  strange  as  any 
that  are  described  in  the  Arabian  tales.'' 

2.  Bacon  came  of  a  family  eminent  for  learning.  His 
father,  Nicholas  Bacon,  was  Lord  Chancellor  and  Keeper 
of  the  Great  Seal  under  Elizabeth ;  his  mother,  daughter 
of  Sir  Anthony  Coke,  tutor  of  the  king. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  3 1 

Of  Bacon's  mother,  Macaulay  writes : 

"  She  was  distinguished  both  as  a  linguist  and  a  theologian. 
She  corresponded  in  Greek  with  Bishop  Jewell,  and  translated  his 
Apologia  from  the  Latin  so  correctly  that  neither  he  nor  Arch- 
bishop Parker  could  suggest  a  single  alteration.  She  also  trans- 
lated a  series  of  sermons  on  fate  and  free-will  from  the  Tuscan 
of  Bernardo  Ochino.  Her  sister,  Katherine,  wrote  Latin  hex- 
ameters and  pentameters  which  would  appear  with  credit  in  the 
Miisa  Etonenses,  Mildred,  another  sister,  was  described  by 
Roger  Ascham  as  the  best  Greek  scholar  among  the  young 
women  of  England,  Lady  Jane  Grej-  alwa)'s  excepted." 

3.  Bacon  had  a  .strong  desire  for  pubhc  employment, 
due,  it  is  fair  to  infer,  to  the  consciousness  that  he  possessed 
exceptional  powers  for  the  service  of  the  state.  It  was  a 
creditable  ambition,  though  the  methods  then  in  vogue  to 
gratify  it  would,  according  to  modern  standards,  hardly 
be  deemed  consistent  with  personal  honor.  It  is  certain 
that  the  reputation  of  being  a  poet,  and  particularly  a  dra- 
matic poet,  writing  for  pay,  would  have  compromised  him 
at  court.  In  those  days  play-acting  and  play-writing  were 
considered  scarcely  respectable.  The  first  theatre  was 
erected  in  London  in  1575,  ten  or  twelve  years  only  before 
the  earliest  production  of  Hamlet.  The  Government,  in 
the  interest  of  public  morals,  frowned  upon  the  perform- 
ances. The  Lord  Mayor,  in  1597,  at  the  very  time  when 
the  greatest  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays  were  coming  out, 


32 


liACON    VS.    SHAKKSPKAKK. 


denounced  the  theatre  as  a  "  place  for  vagrants,  thieves, 
horse-stealers,  contrivers  of  treason,  and  other  idle  and 
dangerous  persons."  Taine  speaks  of  the  stage  in  Shake- 
speare's day  as  "  degraded  by  the  brutalities  of  the  crowd, 
who  not  seldom  would  stone  the  actors,  and  by  the  severi- 
ties of  the  magistrates,  who  would  sometimes  condemn 
them  to  lose  their  ears."  He  thus  describes  the  play-house 
as  it  then  existed  : 

"On  a  dirty  site  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames  rose  the  princi- 
pal theatre,  the  Globe,  a  sort  of  hexagonal  tower,  surrounded  by 
a  muddy  ditch,  on  which  was  hoisted  a  red  flag.  The  common 
people  could  enter  as  well  as  tlie  rich;  there  were  six-penny,  two- 
penny, even  penny  seats;  but  they  could  not  see  it  without 
money.  If  it  rained,  and  it  often  rains  in  London,  the  people  in 
the  pit — butchers,  mercers,  bakers,  sailors,  apprentices — received 
the  streaming  rain  upon  their  heads.  I  suppose  they  did  not 
trouble  themselves  about  it;  it  was  not  so  long  since  that  the}' 
began  to  pave  the  streets  of  London,  and  when  men  like  these 
have  had  experience  of  sewers  and  puddles,  tliey  are  not  afraid 
of  catching  cold. 

"While  waiting  for  the  piece,  they  amuse  themselves  after 
their  fashion — drink  beer,  crack  nuts,  eat  fruits,  how],  and  now 
and  then  resort  to  their  fists;  thej*  have  been  known  to  fall  upon 
the  actors  and  turn  tlie  tiieatre  upside  down.  At  other  times, 
when  they  were  dissatisfied,  the}  went  to  the  tavern  to  give  the 
poet  a  hiding,  or  toss  him  in  a  blanket.  Wlien  the  beer  took 
efTect,  there  was  a  great  ujiturned  barrel  in  the  pit,  a  peculiar 
receptacle  for  general  use.     Tlie  smell  rises,  and   then  comes  the 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  ^^ 

cr}',  '  Burn  the  juniper  1 '  They  burn  some  in  a  plate  on  the  stage, 
and  the  heavy  smoke  fills  the  air.  Certainly,  the  folk  there 
assembled  could  scarcely  get  disgusted  at  anything,  and  cannot 
have  had  sensitive  noses." 

It  may  easily  be  imagined  that  Bacon,  considering  his 
high  birth,  aristocratic  connections,  and  aspirancy  for  official 
honors,  and  already  projecting  a  vast  philosophical  reform 
for  the  human  race,  would  have  shrunk  from  open  alliance 
with  an  institution  like  this. 

4.  To  his  confidential  friend,  Sir  Toby  Matthew,  Bacon 
was  in  the  habit  of  sending  copies  of  his  books  as  they  came 
from  the  press.  On  one  of  these  occasions  he  forwards, 
with  an  air  of  mystery  and  half  apologetically,  certain 
works  which  he  describes  as  the  product  of  his  "  recreation," 
called  by  him,  also,  curiously,  "  works  of  the  alphabet," 
upon  which  not  even  Mrs.  Pott's  critical  acumen  has  been 
able  to  throw,  from  sources  other  than  conjecture,  any 
Hght.  In  a  letter  addressed  to  Bacon  by  Matthew  while 
abroad,  in  acknowledgment  of  some  "  great  and  noble 
token  of  favor,"  we  find  this  sentence : 

"  The  most  prodigious  wit  that  ever  I  knew  of  my  nation  and 
of  this  side  of  the  sea,  is  of  your  Lordship's  name,  though  he  be 
known  by  another." 

It  has  been   suggested,   not  without    reason,   that   the 

"  token  of  favor  "  sent  to  Matthew  was  the  foHo   edition 
3 


j^4  r.ACON    vs.    SHAKESPEARE. 

of  the  Shakespeare  Plays,  published  in  1623.  It  is  certain 
that  Matthew's  letter  was  written  subsequently  to  January 
27,  162  I.* 

5.  Bacon  kept  a  commonplace  book  which  he  called  a 
Promus,  now  in  the  archives  of  the  liritish  Museum.  It 
consisted  of  several  large  sheets,  on  which  from  time  to 
time  he  jotted  down  all  kinds  of  suggestive  and  striking 
phrases,  proverbs,  aphorisms,  metaphors,  and  quaint  turns 
of  e.xpression,  found  in  the  course  of  his  reading,  and  avail- 
able for  future  use.  With  the  exception  of  the  proverbs 
from  the  French,  the  entries,  one  thousand  six  hundred  and 
fifty-five  in  number,  are  in  his  own  handwriting.  These 
verbal  treasures  are  scattered,  as  thick  as  the  leaves  of  Val- 
lombrosa,  throughout  the  Plays.  Mrs.  Pott  finds,  by  actual 
count,  four  thousand  four  hundred  and  four  instances  in 
which  they  are  reproduced  there — some  of  them,  in  more 
or  less  covert  or  modified  form,  over  and  over  again.     We 

♦Various  attempts  have  been  made  to  break  the  force  of  this  testimony. 
It  has  been  urged  that,  as  Bacon  had  been  raised  to  the  peerage,  he  had 
acquired  another  name  under  which  to  publish  his  works.  This  seems  too 
frivolous  for  serious  remark.  It  has  also  been  conjectured  that  Matthew  uiay 
have  been  in  Madrid,  where  a  certain  Francisco  de  Quevedo  was  writing 
under  a  pseudonym.  Unfortunately  for  this  theory,  the  Spaniard  (who  has 
never  become  distinguished,  so  far  as  we  know,  for  "  prodigious  wit"')  retained 
the  name  of  Francisco,  the  only  part  that  suggested  Bacon's,  in  his  pseudonym. 
The  simple  truth  is,  Matthew's  description  exactly  fits  the  Shakespeare  Plays 
and  Bacon's  literary  alias.  Indeed,  on  this  ground  alone  we  might  ask,  if  it 
were  legally  permissible,  that  the  court  instruct  the  jur>'  to  find  for  plaintiff. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  35 

can  almost  see  the  architect  at  work,  imbedding  these 
gems  of  beauty  and  wisdom  in  the  wonderful  structures  to 
which,  according  to  Matthew,  he  gave  the  name  of  another. 
While  they  appear  to  a  limited  extent  in  Bacon's  prose 
works,  they  seem  to  have  constituted  a  store-house  of 
materials  for  particular  use  in  the  composition  of  the  Plays. 
Two  of  these  entries  reappear  in  a  single  sentence  in 
Romeo  and  Juliet.  One  is  the  unusual  phrase,  "  golden 
sleep ;  "  and  the  second,  the  new  word,  "  uproused,"  then 
added  for  the  first  time,  like  hundreds  of  others  in  the 
Plays,  out  of  the  same  mint,  to  the  verbal  coinage  of  the 
realm. 

"  But  where  unbruised  youth  with  unstuffed  brain 
Doth  couch  his  limbs,  there  golden  sleep  doth  reign; 
Therefore,  thy  earliness  doth  me  assure, 
Thou  art  uproused  by  some  distemperature." — ii.,  3. 

To  one  familiar  with  the  laws  of  chance,  these  coinci- 
dences \\'ill  fall  little  .short  of  a  mathematical  demonstra- 
tion. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  feature  of  the  Promus  is 
the  group  of  salutatory  phrases  it  contains,  such  as  good- 
morning,  good-day,  and  good-?iig/if,  which  had  not  then 
come  into  use  in  England,  bu!;  which  occur  four  hundred 
and  nineteen  times  in  the  Plays.  These  salutations,  how- 
ever, were  common  at  that  time  in  France,  where  Bacon. 


36  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

as  attache  of  the  British  Embassy,  had  spent  three  years 
in  the  early  part  of  his  hfe.  To  him  we  are  doubtless 
indebted  for  these  little  amenities  of  speech.* 

6.  Other  internal  evidences  also  point  unmistakably  to 
Bacon's  pen.  Peculiarities  of  thought,  style,  and  diction 
are  more  important  in  a  contested  case  of  authorship  than 
the  name  on  the  title-page,  for  there  we  find  the  author's 
own  signature  in  the  very  fibre  of  his  work.  We  have 
only  to  hold  the  Plays,  as  it  were,  up  to  the  light,  to  see 
the  water-mark  imprinted  in  them.  To  elucidate  this  point, 
we  venture  to  spring  upon  our  readers  the  deadly  parallel : 

FROM    SHAKESPEARE.  FROM    BACON. 

"There  is  a  tide  in  the  affairs  of  men  "  In  the  third  place,  I  set  down  rep- 

VVhich,  taken  at  the  flood,  leads  on  to  utation,   because  of  the  peremptory 

fortune;  tides  and  currents  it  hath,  which,  if 

*****!■  they  be  not  taken  in  their  due  time, 

And  we  must  take  the  current  when  are  seldom  recovered."  —  Adiuince- 

it  serves,  ment  0/ Learning. 
Or  lose  our  ventures." 

Julius  Ceesar^  iv.,  3. 

*  One  or  two  specimens  have  been  found  in  earlier  literature,  but  the  state- 
ment in  the  text  is  substantially  correct.  These  salutations  did  not  take  root 
in  English  speech  till  they  were  implanted  there  by  the  author  of  the  Plays. 

R.  M.  Theobald,  Esq.,  Secretary  ol  the  Bacon  Society  of  London,  sends  us 
the  following  very  pertinent  suggestion  on  this  subject:  "  The  real  significance 
of  the  Promus  consists  in  the  enormous  proportion  of  notes  which  Bacon  could 
not  possibly  have  used  in  his  acknowledged  writings ;  the  colloquialisms, 
dramatic  repartees,  turns  of  expression,  proverbs,  etc.  .\ny  biographer  of 
Bacon,  whatever  his  notions  as  to  the  Shakespearean  authorship,  may  be  rea- 
sonably expected  to  offer  some  explanation  of  this  queer  assortment  of 
oddments,  and  to  find  out,  if  possible,  what  use  Bacon  made  of  them;  and  then 
Our  ease  becomes  urgent." 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


37 


FROM    SHAKESPEARE. 

''To  thine  own  self  be  true. 
And  it  must  follow,  as  the  night  the 

day, 
Thou  canst  not  then  be  false  to  any 

man." — Hamlet,  i.,  3. 

*'  That  strain  again  ; — it  had  a  dying 

faU: 
O,   it    came  o'er    my    ear    like    the 

sweet  south. 
That  breathes  upon  a  bank  of  violets, 
Stealing  and  giving  odor." 

Ttvel/th  Night,  i.,  i. 

"  This  majestical  roof   fretted    with 
golden  fire." — Hamlet,  ii.,  2. 


"By  a  divine  instinct,   men's  minds 

mistrust 
Ensuing  danger;   as,    by  proof,   we 

see 
The  waters  swell  before  a  boist'rous 

storm."' — Richard  III.,  ii.,  3. 

"  Who  having    unto    truth,    by  tell- 
ing of  it, 
Made  such  a  sinner  of  his  memory. 
To  credit  his  own  lie." 

Tempest,  i.,  2. 


"  Losers  will  have  leave 
To  ease  their  stomachs  with  their  bit- 
ter tongues." 

Titus  Androtiicus,  iii,  i. 

"The  ivy  which  had  hid  my  princely 

trunk. 
And  sucked  my  verdure  out  on't." 

Tempest,  i.,  2. 


FRO.M    BACON. 


"  Be  so  true  to  thyself  as  thou  be 
not  false  to  others." — Essay  0/  Wis- 
dom. 


"  The  breath  of  flowers  .  .  .  comes 
and  goes  like  the  warbling  of  music." 
—  Essay  0/  Gardens. 


"  For  if  that  great  work-master  had 
been  of  a  human  disposition,  he  would 
have  cast  the  stars  into  some  pleasant 
and  beautiful  works  and  orders,  like 
the  frets  in  the  roofs  of  houses." — 
Advancement  p/  Learning. 

'•  As  there  are  .  .  .  secret  swellings 
of  seas  before  a  tempest,  so  there  are 
in   States." — Essay  of  Sedition. 


"  With  long  and  continual  counter- 
feiting and  with  oft  telling  a  lie,  he 
was  turned  by  habit  almost  into  the 
thing  he  seemed  to  be  ;  and  from  a 
liar  to  a  believer."— //«/.  Henry 
VII. 

"  Always  let  losers  have  their 
words." —  The  Proiniis. 


"It  was  ordained  that  this  winding- 
ivy  of  a  Piantagenet  should  kill  the 
tree  itself."— iV/V.  Henry  VII. 


-^8 


HACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 


FROM    SHAKESPEARE. 

"I  shall  show  the  cinders  ut  my 
spirits 
Through  the  ashes  of  my  chance." 

Antony  and  Cleopatra^  v.,  2. 


FROM    BACON. 


"The  sparks  of  my  affection  shall 
ever  rest  quick  under  the  ashes  of  my 
fortune.''— /.<'//fr  to  Falkland. 


"  Lo !  as  at  Euglish  feasts,  so  1  re- 
greet 

The  daintiest  last,  to  make  the  end 
most  sweet." 

Richard  II..,  i.,  3. 


"  Let  not  this  Parliament  end  like  a 
Dutch  feast  in  salt  meats,  but  like  an 
English  least  in  sweet  meats." 

Speech  in  Parliament,  1604. 


■"  He  gives   the  bastinado    with    his 

tongue  ; 
Our  ears  are  cudgelled." 

King  John,  ii.,  i. 

''  Nothing  almost  sees  miracles 
But  misery." 

King  Lear.,  ii.,  2. 


•' No  man  loves  one  the  better  for 
givmg  him  a  bastinado  with  a  little 
cudgel." — Advice  to  Queen. 


•'Certainly,  if  miracles  be  the  con- 
trol over  nature,  they  appear  most  in 
adversity."— ^way  0/ Adversity. 


"Advantage  is  a  better  soldier  than 
rashness." — Henry  V.,  iii.,  6. 


'■  With  taper  light 
To  seek  the  beauteous  eye  of  heaven 
to  garnish. 

Is  wasteful  and  ridiculous  excess." 

King  John,  iv.,  2. 


"  If  time  give  his  Majesty  the  ad- 
vantage, what  need  precipitation  to 
extreme  remedies  T'— Letter  to  I  'il- 
liers. 

"  But  this  work,  shining  in  itself, 
needs  no  taper." — Amendment  of 
Laws. 


"The  wine  of  life  is  drawn,  and  the 

mere  lees 
Is  \tiV— Macbeth,  ii.,  i. 


"The  memory  of  King  Richard  lay, 
like  lees,  in  the  bottom  of  men's 
hearts."— //«/.  Henry  VU. 


"  Brother,  you  have  a  vice  of  mercy 

in  you, 
Which  better  fits  a  lion  than  a  man." 
Troilus  and  Cressida.,  v.,  3. 


■'  For  of  lions  it  is  a  received  belief 
that  their  fury  ceaseth  toward  any- 
thing that  yieldeth  and  prostrateth 
itself."  *— Of  Charity. 


*  In  this  instance,  as  in  many  others,  it  requires  Bacon's  prose  to  explain 
Shakespeare's  poetry. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


FROM    SHAKESPEARE.  FROM    BACON. 


39 


"As  the  mournful  crocodile  "  It  is  the  wisdom  of  crocodiles,  that 

With  sorrow  snares  relenting  passen-  shed  tears  when  they  would  devour." 

gers.'  — Essay  of  Wisdom. 
Second.  Henry  VJ.,  iii.,  2. 

^' SooiAsayer :  "There   was    an    Egyptian   sooth- 

"  Therefore,   O  Antony,  stay  not  by  sayer    that    made  Antonius    believe 

his  side  ;  that  his  genius,  which  olherwise  was 

Thy  daemon,  that's  thy   spirit  which  brave  and  confident,  was,  in  the  pres- 

keeps  thee,  is  ence    of   Octavius   Csesar,   poor  and 

Noble,  courageous,  high,  unmatcha-  cowardly  ;  and  therefore  he  advised 

ble,  him  to  absent  himself  as  much  as  he 

Where  Caesar   is  not;  but  near  him  could,  and  remove  far  from  him.''* — 

thy  angel  N^ai.  Hist. 

Becomes  a  Fear,  as  being  overpow- 
ered :  therefore. 

Make  space  enough  between  you." 
A  ntony  and  Cieo/'atra,  v.,  2. 

The  foregoing  list  might  be  extended  almost  indefinitely, 
but  enough  is  given  to  show  that  on  these  two  minds  (if 
there  were  two)  fell  the  light  of  inteUigence,  in  repeated 
flashes,  at  the  same  exact  angle.  The  cumulative  force 
of  these  examples,  taken  in  connection  with  the  solid  prej- 
udice against  which,  in  some  instances,  they  break  in  vain, 
reminds  us  of  the  charge  of  the  Old  Guard  at  Waterloo, 
the  "  irresistible  meeting  the  immovable." 
■      7.  Bacon's  love  of  flowers  perfumed  his  whole  life.     It 


*The  Natural  Histoiy  was  not  printed  till  eleven  years  after  Shake- 
speare's death.  It  is  clear,  then,  that  Shakespeare  did  not  take  the  story  from 
Bacon.  It  is  almost  equally  clear  that  Bacon  did  not  take  it  from  Shakespeare, 
for  he  adds  a  particular  which  is  not  in  the  play,  viz.:  "  The  soothsayer  was 
thought  to  be  suborned  by  Cleopatra  to  make  Antony  live  m  Egypt  and  other 
places  remote  from  Rome." 


4°  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPKARE. 

was  to  him,  as  he  said,  "  the  jjiirest  of  liuman  pleasures." 
Of  the  thirty-five  species  of  garden  plants  mentioned  in  the 
Plays,  he  enumerates  thirty-two  in  his  prose  works,  bending 
over  them,  as  it  were,  lovingly  and,  like  the  dramatist, 
noting  the  seasons  in  which  they  bloom.  In  both  authors, 
taste  and  knowledge  go  liand  in  hand. 

This  point  will  bear  elaboration,  for  the  two  methods  of 
treatment  seem  to  be  mutually  related,  like  the  foliage  of 
a  plant  and  the  exquisite  blossom.  Bacon  .says :  "  I  do 
hold  it,  in  the  royal  ordering  of  gardens,  there  ought  to 
be  gardens  for  all  the  months  of  the  year,  in  which  sever- 
ally things  of  beauty  may  be  then  in  sea.son  ;  "  and  with 
this  end  in  view,  he  proceeds  to  classify  plants  according 
to  their  periods  of  blooming. 

Shakespeare,  on  his  part,  introduces  to  us  a  beautiful 
shej)herdess  distributing  flowers  among  her  friends ;  to  the 
young,  the  flowers  of  spring ;  to  the  middle-aged,  those 
of  summer ;  while  the  flowers  that  bloom  on  the  edge  of 
winter  are  given  to  the  old.  What  is  still  more  remark- 
able, however,  the  groupings  in  both  are  substantially  the 
same.  One  commentator  has  even  proved  the  correct- 
ness of  a  disputed  reading  in  the  play  by  reference  to  the 
corresponding  passage  in  Bacon. 

We  present  the  two  lists,  side  by  side,  for  comparison, 
as  follows : 


BRIF.F    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


41 


FROM    SHAKESPEARE. 

"  Now,  my  fair'st  friend, 

I  would  I  had  some  flowers  o'  th' 
spring,  that  might 

Become  your  time  of  day;  and  yours; 
and  yours;  Daffodils, 

That  come  before  the  swallow  dares, 
and  take 

The  winds  of  March  with  beauty; 
violets,  dim, 

But  sweeter  than  the  lids  of  Juno's 
eyes, 

Or  Cytherea's  breath ;  pale  firimyoses. 

That  die  unmarried  ere  they  can  be- 
hold 

Bright  Phoebus  in  his  strength,  a  mal- 
ady 

Most  incident  to  maids;  bold  ox-lips 
and 

The  crown  imperial;  HHesof  all  kinds. 

The  flower-de-luce  being  one. 

"  Sir,  the  year  growing  ancient — 
Not  yet  on  summer's  death,  nor  on 

the  birth 
Of  trembling  winter— the  fairest  flow- 
ers o'  th'  season 
Are  our  carnations  2indi  streaked  ^z7//- 
flower. 

Wot  lavender,  mint,savory,  marjoram; 
The  marigold,  that  goes  to  bed  with 

th'  sun, 
And  with  him  rises,  weeping ;   these 

are  flowers 
Of  middle  summer,  and  I  think  they're 

given 
To  men  of  middle  age. 

"  Reverend  sirs, 
For  you   there's  rosemary  and   rue; 

these  keep 
Seeming    and    savor    all    the   winter 

\ox\g."  —  Winter's   Tale,  iv.,  3. 


FROM    BACON. 

"  There  followeth,  for  the  latter  part 
of  January  and  February,  the  maze- 
reon-tree,  which  then  blossoms;  .  .  . 
primroses,  anemones,  the  early  tulip. 
For  March,  there  come  violets,  espe- 
cially the  single  blue,  which  are  the 
earliest.  In  April,  follow  the  double 
white  violet,  .  .  .  the  p&\e  daffodil,  the 
co7vslip,  flovier-de-luces,  and  lilies  0/ 
all  natures." 


"In  May  and  June  come  pinks  of  all 
sorts,  specially  the  blush  pink  ;  roses 
of  all  kinds,  except  the  musk  rose, 
which  comes  later;  .  .  .  the  French 
marigold,  .  .  .  lavender  in  flowers. 
In  July  come  gilliflowers  of  all  vari- 
eties." 


"  For  December  and  Januarj-  and 
the  latter  part  of  November,  you  must 
take  such  things  as  are  green  all  win- 
ter, .  .  .  fir-trees,  rosemary,  laven- 
der."— £ssay  0/  Gardens. 


\2  BAOJN    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

The  essay  was  first  printed  in  if>25,  nine  years  after 
Shakespeare's  death.  It  follows  that  Hacon,  who  had 
made  a  study  of  gardens  all  his  life,  either  borrowed  from 
Shakespeare  or  wrote  the  play. 

8.  In  1867,  there  was  discovered  in  a  private  library  in 
London,  a  box  of  old  papers,  among  which  were  some 
manuscripts  of  Francis  Bacon,  bound  together  in  the  form 
of  a  volume.  In  the  table  of  contents  on  the  title-page, 
among  the  names  of  other  compositions  known  to  be 
Bacon's,  appear  those  of  two  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays, 
Richard  II.  and  Richard  I II..  though  the  Plays  themselves 
have  been  abstracted  from  the  book.  Judge  Holmes  adds 
the  following  piece  of  information  in  regard  to  this  discov- 
ery : 

"The  blank  space  at  the  side  and  between  the  titles  is  scrib- 
bled all  over  with  various  words,  letters,  phrases,  and  scraps  of 
verse  in  English  and  Latin,  as  if  the  copyist  were  merel}-  trying 
his  pen  and  writing  down  whatever  first  came  into  his  head. 
Among  these  scribblings,  beside  the  name  of  Francis  Bacon 
Several  times,  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare  is  written  eight 
or  nine  times  over." 

It  is  also  at  least  a  singular  coincidence  that  the  ex- 
traordinary word  "  honorificabihtudino,"  found  here,  oc- 
curs with  a  slight  change  of  ending  in  Love's  Labor's 
Lost. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  43 

9.  At  the  death  of  Queen  EHzabeth,  John  Davis,  the 
poet  and  courtier,  went  to  Scotland  to  meet  James  I.  To 
him  while  on  the  journey  northward,  Bacon  addressed  a 
letter,  asking  kind  intercession  in  his  behalf  with  the  King, 
and  expressing  the  hope,  in  closing,  that  he  (Davis)  would 
be  "  good  to  concealed  poets." 

10.  Stratford,  the  home  of  Shakespeare,  is  not  referred 
to  in  any  of  the  Plays,  nor  the  beautiful  river  Avon,  on 
which  it  is  situated  ;  but  St.  Albans,  the  residence  of  Bacon, 
is  mentioned  twenty-three  times.  Tender  memories  of 
Yorke  Place,  where  Bacon  was  born,*  and  of  the  County 
of  Kent,  the  home  of  his  father's  ancestry,  are  conspicuous 
in  more  than  one  of  the  Historical  Plays. 

1 1 .  Bacon  was  remarkably  painstaking  in  preparing  his 
works  for  the  press.  He  rewrote  the  Novum  Orgamun 
twelve  times,  and  the  Essays  thirty  times,  before  he 
deemed  them  fit  for  publication.  No  wonder  the  editors 
of  the  Plays  remarked  upon  the  beauty  and  neatness  of 
the  copy. 

12.  With  the  exception  of  a  brief  but  briUiant  career  in 
Parliament,  and  an  occasional  service  in  unimportant  causes 

*  "  Francis  Bacon,  the  glory  of  his  age  and  nation,  the  adorner  and  orna- 
ment of  learning,  was  born  in  York  House,  or  York  Place,  in  the  Strand,  on 
the  two  and  twentieth  day  of  January,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord,  1560." — Life 
0/  Bacon^  published  in  1657,  by  Raiuley^  his  Lordship''s  Chaplain,  and  subse- 
quently Chaplain  to  the  King. 


44  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

as  attorney  for  the  crown,  IJacon  seems  to  have  been  with- 
out employment  from  i  syc;,  when  he  returned  from  France 
at  the  age  of  eighteen,  to  i  597,  when  he  pubHshed  his  first 
volume  of  Essays.  Here  were  nearly  twenty  of  the  best 
years  of  his  life  apparently  run  to  waste.  The  volume  of 
Essays  was  a  small  i  2mo,  containing  but  ten  out  of  the 
fiftv-eight  sparkling  gems  which  subsequent  editions  gave 
to  the  admiration  and  delight  of  posterity.  His  philosoph- 
ical works,  excepting  a  shght  sketch  in  1585,  did  not  begin 
to  appear  till  several  years  later.  From  1597  to  1607, 
when  he  was  appointed  Solicitor  General,  he  was  again,  so 
far  as  we  know,  substantially  unemployed — a  period  of  ten 
years,  contemporaneous  with  the  appearance  of  the  great 
tragedies  of  Hamlet  (rewritten),  Julius  C?esar,  King  Lear, 
and  Macbeth.  In  the  meanwhile,  he  was  hard  pressed 
for  money,  and  failing  to  get  relief  (unhappily,  before 
the  days  of  Samuel  A\'eller)  in  a  vain  effort  to  marry 
a  wealthy  widow,  he  was  actually  thrown  into  prison  for 
debt.* 

That  he  was  idle  all  this  time,  under  great  pecuniary 
pressure,  his  mind   teeming  with  the  richest  fancy,  it   is 


*  On  one  of  these  occasions,  the  debt  was  due  to  a  Jewish  money-lender, 
and  was  paid  by  Anthony,  brother  of  Francis.  At  about  that  time  appeared 
the  great  play.  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  in  which  a  money-lending  Jew  is 
pilloried  for  all  time,  and  the  friend  of  the  debtor  is  Antonio. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  45 

impossible  to  admit.  Such  a  hypothesis  is  utterly  incon- 
sistent with  the  possession  of  those  fixed,  almost  phenom- 
enal, habits  of  industry  with  which  he  afterward  achieved 
magnificent  results.  On  this  point,  indeed,  we  have  inter- 
esting testimony  from  his  mother.  A  woman  of  deep  piety, 
mindful  of  the  proprieties  of  her  station  in  Hfe,  she  evidently 
became  alarmed  over  some  mystery  connected  with  her 
son.  Probably  she  had  a  suspicion  of  its  nature,  for  not 
even  the  genius  that  created  Hamlet  could  subdue  mater- 
nal instincts.  In  a  letter  to  Anthony,  the  brother  of 
Francis,  under  date  of  May  24,  1592,  she  expresses  her 
solicitude,  as  follows : 

"  I  verily  think  j-oiir  brother's  weak  stomach  to  digest  hath 
been  much  caused  and  confirmed  by  untimely  going  to  bed,  and 
then  musing  nescio  quid*  when  he  should  sleep." 

At  another  time,  when  the  two  brothers  were  together 
at  Gray's  Inn,  and  full  of  enthusiasm,  as  she  knew,  for  the 
wicked  drama,  she  wrote,  begging  them 

■'  Not  to  mum  nor  mask,  nor  sinfully  revel." 

In  these  recreations,  of  which,  according  to  Chamber- 
lain (who  wrote  in  1613),  Bacon  "was  the  chief  contriver," 
he  gained  that  practical  knowledge  of  stage  machinery 
which  afterward  served  him  so  well,  and  which  we  find 


*  I  know  not  what. 


^6  BACON    VS.    SHARKSPKAKK. 

displayed  with  so  much  jiarticiihirily  in  his  Essay  of  Mas- 
(jucs.* 

It  may  he  added  that  witli  his  appointment  to  high  office 
and  advent  into  pubhc  hfe  the  production  of  the  Shake- 
speare Plays  suddenly  ceased.t 


*  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Bacon  regarded  the  drama  as  an  educational 
instrumentality  of  the  highest  value.     He  says  of  it : 

"Although  in  modern  states  play-acting  is  esteemed  but  as  a  ludicrous  thing, 
except  when  it  is  too  satirical  and  biting,  yet  among  the  ancients  it  became  a 
means  of  forming  the  souls  of  men  to  virtue.  Even  the  wise  and  prudent,  and 
great  philosophers,  considered  it  to  be,  as  it  were,  the  plectrum  of  the  mind. 
And  most  certainly,  what  is  one  of  the  secrets  of  nature,  the  minds  of  men, 
when  assembled  together,  are  more  open  to  affections  and  impressions  than 
when  they  are  alone." — De  AugmeHiis. 

t  What  a  crushing  argument  our  friends  on  the  other  side  would  have  made 
against  Scott's  autliorship  of  tlie  M'averly  novels,  had  a  kind  Providence  sent 
them  into  the  world  fifty  years  earlier  !  Scott  was  a  great  poet,  and  previous 
to  the  publication  of  H'averly,  in  the  forty-third  year  of  his  age,  he  had  never 
written  a  romance  in  prose.  In  1814,  when  ll'averiy  made  its  mysterious 
appearance,  Scott  published  in  two  volumes  a  work  on  Border  Antiquities, 
contributed  article^  on  Chivalry  and  the  Drama  to  the  Encyclopaedia 
Brilannica,  and  edited  the  Li/e  and  Works  0/ Dean  Swi/t.  The  latter  publica- 
tion, comprising  nineteen  volumes,  was  issued  in  the  same  week  with 
Waverly.  In  the  following  year  Guy  Mannering  appeared  ;  and  also,  from 
Scott,  the  two  poems.  Lord  0/  the  Isles  and  Field  0/  Waterloo.  In  1816, 
came  in  quick  succession  from  the  Great  Unknown  the  Antiquary,  Black 
Dwarf,  Old  Mortality,  and  Tales  0/  My  Landlord,  first  series;  and  in  the 
same  year  from  Scott's  pen,  Paul's  Letters  to  If  is  Kinsfolk  and  the  Edinburgh 
Annual  Register.  The  poem,  Harold  the  Dauntless,  was  published  in  Jan- 
uary, 1817,  preceded  within  thirty  days  by  three  of  the  above-named  works  of 
fiction. 

During  all  this  time  Scott  was  keeping  '•  open  house  at  .^bbotsford  in  the 
old  feudal  fashion,  and  was  seldom  without  visitors,  entirely  occupied  to  all 
outward  appearance  with  local  and  domestic  business  and  sport,  building  and 
planting,  adding  wing  to  wing,  acre  to  acre,  plantation  to  plantation,  with  just 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  47 

13.  Ben  Jonson  was  Bacon's  private  secretary,  and  pre- 
sumably in  the  secret,  if  there  were  any,  of  his  employer's 
literary  undertakings.  In  this  fact  we  find  the  key  to  the 
exquisite  satire  of  the  inscription,  composed  by  him  and 
printed  opposite  Shakespeare's  portrait  in  the  foho  of  1623, 
of  which  the  following,  in  reference  to  the  engraver's  art, 
is  an  extract : 

"  O,  could  he  but  have  drawn  his  wit 
As  well  in  brasse  as  he  hath  hit 
His  face,  the  print  would  then  surpass 
All  that  was  ever  writ  in  brasse." 

It  is  a  straw,  but  one  carrying  with  it,  perhaps,  '■  the 
wisdom  of  the  fathers,"  that  in  this  invocation  Jonson 
speaks  of  the  Plays  as  superior  to 

"  All  that  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome  sent  forth  ;" 

while  in  a  subsequent  book  of  his  own,  he  uses  exactly 
the  same  language  in  describing  Bacon's  genius : 

"  He  performed  that  in  our  tongue  which  may  be  compared  or 
preferred  either  to  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome." 

Ben  Jonson  and  Sir  Toby  Matthew  made  lists  of  the 
great  wits  of  their  time  and  of   the  preceding    century  ; 

leisure  enough  for  the  free-hearted  entertainment  of  his  guests  and  the  culti- 
vation of  friendh'  relations  with  his  humble  neighbors." 

He  even  mystified  some  of  his  most  intimate  friends  by  reviewing  one  of 
his  own  novels  in  the  Quarterly. 


48  KACON    VS.    SHAKKSI'KARE. 

both  placed  Harf)n  at  the  head  ;  neither  of  them  mentioned 
Shakespeare.  The  reasonable  explanation  is  that  they 
were  ///  the  sixirt. 

Jonson  pronounced  Bacon  "  the  mark  and  acme  of  our 
age."     Matthew  wrote  of  him : 

"A  man  so  rare  in  knowledge,  of  so  many  several  kinds, 
indued  with  the  facility  and  felicity  of  expressing  it  all,  in  so 
elegant,  significant,  so  abundant  and  yet  so  choice  and  ravishing 
a  way  of  words,  of  metaphors  and  allusions,  as  perhaps  the  world 
has  not  seen  since  it  was  a  world." 

14.  Bacon's  authorship  of  the  Plays  was  not  unsus- 
pected during  his  life-time.  When  he  was  appointed  by  the 
Queen  to  join  in  the  prosecution  of  P>ssex  for  treason,  and 
was  assigned  to  that  count  of  the  indictment  which  charged 
connivance  with  the  play-actors  in  producing  the  play  of 
Richard  II.,  he  protested,  on  the  ground  that  his  name  was 
already  bruited  about  in  that  connection,  and  it  would 
now  be  said  of  him,  in  derision,  that  he  gave  in  evidence 
his  07i'n  tah's*  These  rumors  could  have  originated  only 
in  the  recognized  inadequacy  of  the  reputed  authorship. 


*  Bacon's  exact  language,  applying  primarily  to  Hayward's  pamphlet,  but 
with  a  deeper  significance,  as  we  may  infer  from  the  Queen's  wrath  over  the 
performance  of  the  play,  was  as  follows  : 

'•  Whereupon  I  replied  to  that  allotment,  and  said  to  their  Lordships,  that  it 
was  an  old  matter,  and  had  no  manner  of  coherence  with  the  rest  of  the 
charges,  being  matters  of  Ireland,  and  thereupon  that  I  having  been  wronged 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  49 

15.  With  the  exception  of  the  isolated  play  of  King 
John,  the  series  depicting  English  history  extends  from 
the  deposition  of  Richard  II.  to  the  birth  of  Elizabeth,  in 
the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  In  this  long  chain,  there  is  one 
break  and  one  only — the  important  period  of  Henry  VII., 
when  the  foundations  of  social  order,  as  we  now  have  them, 
were  firmly  laid.  The  omission,  on  any  but  the  Baconian 
theory  of  authorship,  is  inexplicable,  for  the  dramatist 
could  hardly  have  failed,  except  for  personal  considerations, 
to  drop  his  plummet  into  the  richest  and  most  instructive 
experiences  of  political  life  that  lay  in  his  path.  The 
truth  is.  Bacon  wrote  a  history  of  the  missing  reign  in  prose, 


by  bruits  before,  this  would  expose  me  to  tliem  more;  and  it  would  be  said  T 
gave  in  evidence  mine  own  tales."' 

It  is  certainly  remarkable  that  Bacon  was  able  to  preserve  his  incognito 
as  well  as  he  did,  considering  that  in  Sonnet  LXXVI.  we  find  the  following: 

"  Why  write  I  still  all  one,  ever  the  same. 
And  keep  invention  in  a  noted  weed, 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  my  name. 
Showing  their  birth  and  where  they  do  proceed  ?  " 

Here  is  a  plain  statement  that  the  author  of  this  sonnet  was  writing  under 
a  disguise. 

The  same  remarkable  admission  appears  in  Bacon's  prayer : 

"The  state  and  bread  of  the  poor  and  oppressed  have  been  precious  in  mine 
eyes ;  I  have  hated  all  cruelty  and  hardness  of  heart ;  I  have,  though  in  a 
despised  weed,  sought  the  good  of  all  men." 

In  the  sonnets,  he  had  assumed  a  popular  literary  dress;  but  here,  on  his 
knees  before  God.  he  confesses  to  a  higher  kind  of  composition  that  was  ■'  de- 
spised."' . 


30  BACON    VS.    SHAKKSPEARK. 

which  exactly  fills  the  gap  :  the  one  is  tongued  and  grooved, 
as  it  were,  into  the  other. 

I  6.  Troiliis  and  CirssiJo  was  published  for  the  first  time, 
witlKnil  reservation,  in  1609.  A  writer  in  the  {)reface  claims 
special  credit  for  the  work  on  the  ground  that  it  had  nijt 
been  produced  on  the  public  stage,  or  (to  use  his  own 
words)  "  never  clapper-clawed  with  the  palms  of  the  vul- 
gar." or  "sullied  with  the  smoky  breath  of  the  multitude." 
Then  he  thanks  fortune  that  a  copy  of  the  play  had  es- 
caped from  "  grand  possessors." 

Three  inferences  seem  to  be  justifiable,  viz. :  i.  The  au- 
thor was  indifferent  to  pecuniary  reward  ;  *  2.  He  was  not 
a  member  of  the  theatrical  profession ;  3.  He  was  of  high 
social  rank. 

17.  The  Plays,  as  they  came  out,  were  first  pubhshed 
anonymously-  Several  of  them  had  been  in  the  hands  of 
the  public  for  years  before  the  name  of  Shakespeare  ap- 
peared on  the  title-page.  Other  plavs.  not  belonging  to 
the  Shakespearean  canon,  and  nio.st  of  them  of  very  infe- 
rior merit,  were  also  given  to  the  world  as  Shakespeare's. 
We  have  fifteen  of  these  heterogeneous  compositions  at- 
trilnited    to    the   same    "  di\ine  "   authorship, — geese   and 


*  At  this  time,  Bacon  was  in  easy  circumstances.  By  the  death  of  his 
brother  he  had  come  into  possession  of  Gorhambury  and  other  remnants  of  the 
family  estate  ;  and  he  was  in  receipt  of  a  salary  from  the  government. 


BRIEK    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  51 

eagles  coming  helter-skelter  from  a  single  nest, — at  a  time 
when  Coke,  the  law  officer  of  the  government,  declared 
poetasters  and  playwrights  to  be  "  lit  subjects  for  the 
grand  jury  as  vagrants."  It  was  enough  for  the  impecu- 
nious authors  of  these  plays  that  Shakespeare,  manager 
and  part  proprietor  of  two  theatres,  and  amassing  a  large 
fortune  in  the  business,  was  willing,  apparently,  to  adopt 
ever\'  child  of  the  drama  laid  on  his  door-step.  This  ac- 
counts for  the  venomous  shaft  which  Greene  in  his  envy 
aimed  at  him.  Greene  was  a  writer  for  the  stage,  and 
took  occasion  one  time,  in  a  little  squib  addressed  to  his 
professional  brethren,  to  refer  to  one  "  Shake-scene  "  as 
"  an  upstart  crow  beautified  with  our  feathers."  It  is  evi- 
dent, nevertheless,  that  Shakespeare  was  a  favorite  nom  dc 
pluvif  with  the  dramatic  wits  of  his  time. 

18.  The  first  complete  edition  of  the  Plays,  substantially 
as  we  now  have  them,  was  the  famous  folio,  from  the  au- 
thor's manuscripts,  of  1623.  Its  titles  number  thirty-six, 
and  may  be  classified,  for  our  present  purpose,  as  follows : 
Plays,  previously  printed,  in  \-arious  quartos,  at  dates  rang- 
ing from  1597  to  1609,  eighteen;  those  not  previously 
printed,  but  known  to  have  been  produced  on  the  stage, 
twelve ;  lastly,  those,  so  far  as  we  know,  entirely  new,  six. 
Of  the  Plays  in  the  first  class,  it  is  found,  by  comparison, 
that  several  had  been  rewritten,  and  in  some  cases  greatly 


52 


i;al(>.\   vs.   shakkspkark. 


enlarged,  during  the  fourteen  years  or  more  subsequent  to 
their  first  appearance.  The  same  is  probably  true  of  some 
in  the  second  class,  though  on  this  point  we  are,  naturally 
enough,  without  means  of  verification.  In  any  event, 
however,  it  is  certain  that  the  compositions  which  were 
new,  together  with  those  which,  by  changes  and  accre- 
tions, had  been  made  new,  constitute  no  inconsiderable 
part  of  the  book.*  Who  did  this  work  /  Who  prepared  it 
for  the  press?  Shakespeare  died  in  1616,  seven  years  be- 
f(jre  the  folio  was  published,  and  for  six  years  before  his 
death  he  had  lived  in  Stratford,  without  facilities  for  such 
a  task,  and  in  a  social  atmosphere  in  the  highest  degree 
unfavorable  for  it.  On  the  other  hand,  Bacon  retired  to 
private  life  in  1621,  at  the  age  of  sixty,  in  the  plenitude  of 
his  powers,  and  under  circumstances  that  would  naturallv 


*  The  most  noteworthy  examples  under  this  head  arc  the  Second  anA  Third 
Paris  0/ Henry  VI.  These  plays  were  first  published  in  1594  and  '95,  under  the 
titles,  respectively,  of  the  First  Part  of  the  Contention  between  the  Two  Famous 
Houses,  Y'ork  and  Lancaster,  and  the  True  Tragedy  0/ Richard,  Dukeof  York. 
They  were  republished  in  1600,  and  again  in  1619  (three  years  after  Shake- 
speare's death),  under  the  same  general  title  and  in  other  resjiects.  also,  substan- 
tially as  first  printed.  In  the  folio  of  1623.  however,  they  appear  under  new 
titles  and  largely  rewritten.  The  Second  Fart  (for  instance),  containing  three 
thousand  and  fifty-seven  lines,  suddenly  comes  out  with  fifteen  hundred  and 
seventy-eight  lines  entirely  new,  and  with  about  one  half  of  the  remainder  al- 
tered or  expanded  from  passages  in  the  old. 

The  Plays  were  revised  and  collected  for  final  publication  at  the  same  time 
that  Bacon  revised  and  collected  his  prose  work.;,  for  the  same  purpose,  1621-6. 
The  coincidence  is  worthy  of  nnnt^in. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  53 

cause  him  to  roll  this  apple  of  discord,  refined  into  the 
purest  gold,  down  the  ages. 

19.  Other  mysteries  cluster  around  this  edition.  'I'he 
ostensible  editors  were  two  playwrights,  named  Heminge 
and  Condell,  formerly  connected  with  the  company  of 
which  Shakespeare  was  a  member.  Heminge  appears,  also, 
to  have  been  a  grocer.  In  the  dedication  of  the  book,  they 
characterize  the  Plays,  with  singular,  not  to  say  suspicious, 
infelicity,  as  "trifles."  They  astonish  us  still  more  by  the 
use  they  make  of  Pliny's  epistle  to  Vespasian,  prefixed  to 
his  Natural  History,  and  not  translated  into  Enghsh  till 
1635.  Not  only  are  the  thoughts  of  the  Latin  author  most 
happily  introduced,  but  they  are  amplified  and  fitted  to  the 
purpose  with  consummate  literary  skill. 

Then  follows  a  pithy  address  to  the  public,  in  which  the 
editors  seek  to  justify  their  revolutionary  work,  undertaken 
so  long  after  Shakespeare's  death,  on  the  ground  that  all 
previous  publications  of  the  Plays  had  been  made  from 
stolen  copies  and  were,  therefore,  inaccurate  as  well  as 
fraudulent.  A  comparison  of  the  two  sets,  however,  dis- 
closes a  state  of  things  quite  inconsistent  with  the  sincerity 
of  Messrs.  Heminge  and  Condell.  Some  of  the  finest  pas- 
sages, given  in  the  quartos,  are  omitted  in  the  Folio,  one 
particularly  in  Hamlet,  in  which  the  genius  of  the  author, 
as  Swinburne  asserts,  "  soars  up  to  the  very  highest  of  its 


54  BACON    VS.    SHAKKSIM-.AkK. 

height  and  strikes  down  to  the  very  deepest  of  its  depth." 
In  A7//,t,'  Liar,  also,  but  for  the  "  stolen  copies,"  the  follow- 
ing description  of  Cordelia's  sorrow,  together  with  the 
whole  scene  containing  it,  would  have  been  lost  forever : 

"  You  liave  seen 
Sunshine  and  rain  at  once;  her  smiles  and  tears 
I  Were  like  a  better  May;  those  happy  smilcts. 

That  play'd  on  her  ripe  lip,  seemed  not  to  know 
What  guests  were  in  her  eyes  ;  which  parted  thence, 
As  pearls  from  diamonds  dropp'd." 

And  who  is  not  shocked  at  the  statement  in  the  Folio 
that  Desdemona,  at  one  of  her  first  interviews  with  the 
swarthy  Moor,  received  the  story  of  his  life  "  with  a 
world,"  not  of  sighs,  but — "  of  kisses  "  ! 

The  truth  is,  the  quartos  are  precisely  what  we  should 
have  expected  them  to  be,  early  but  authentic  drafts, 
brought  into  final  shape  by  the  author,  under  extraordinary 
mental  distractions,  in  the  folio.  The  strata  may  be  tilted 
and  broken,  but  they  tell  us  of  the  great  forces  of  nature, 
the  elemental  fires  that  seethed  beneath  them. 

Ben  Jonson's  contribution  is,  also,  clearly  susceptible  of 
a  double  meaning.  In  the  verses  opposite  the  portrait,  he 
draws  a  sharp  distinction  (as  well  he  might)  between  the 
lineaments  there  presented  and  those  of  the  mighty  intellect 
which  the  printed  page  sets  before  us. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  55 

"  Look, 
Not  on  his  picture,  but  his  book." 


In  these  well-known  lines,  he  paraphrases  a  Latin  inscrip- 
tion found  under  Bacon's  own  portrait,  converting  it  into 
one  of  the  brightest  flashes  in  this  symposium  of  wit. 

On  the  subject  of  Shakespeare's  art,  Jonson's  mind  was 
apparently  in  a  state  of  hopeless  confusion.  In  his  con- 
versations with  Drummond,  he  declared  unquahfiedly  that 
Shakespeare  had  no  art.  In  his  metrical  introduction  to 
the  Folio,  he  declares,  just  as  unqualifiedly,  that  Shakespeare 
had  art,  and  that  of  the  most  pronounced  and  toilsoine 
character.  He  goes  so  far  as  to  liken  the  author  of  the 
Plays  to  a  blacksmith  sweating  over  an  anvil.  Riding  two 
horses,  even  if  one  were  Pegasus,  was  evidently  an  ungra- 
cious task  for  Rare  Old  Ben. 

20.  It  would  be  well-nigh  miraculous  if  in  all  these  works, 
dealing  as  they  do  with  every  kind  and  degree  of  human 
vicissitude,  we  could  not  find  somewhere  in  them  a  trace 
of  the  author's  own  personality.  Indeed,  editors  have  been 
constantly  searching  for  it,  even  at  the  risk  of  converting 
exegesis  into  biography.  Two  of  them,  for  instance,  have 
surmised  that  the  dramatist  was  educated  at  Oxford  or 
Cambridge  and  afterwards  trained  to  law  at  one  of  the 
Inns  of  Court,  because  Justice  Shallow  recommends  such  a 


c^6  1!.\(<>N    vs.    SMAKKSI'KARK. 

course  of  study  (actually  jjursued  by  Bacon)  in  J/rnry  //'. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that,  on  the  supposition  of 
Bacon's  authorship,  we  should  discover  in  two  of  the  plays 
unmistakable  marks  of  a  great  crisis  in  his  life.  These  two 
are  Timon  of  Athens  and  Ifriny  ]'IfI.  They  seemed 
to  be  filled,  like  ocean  shells,  with  the  dash  and  roar 
of  waves.  They  were  both  printed  for  the  first  time  in 
the  Folio  of  1623,  the  Timoii  never  having  been  heard 
of  before,  and  the  other  also,  almost  as  certainly,  a  new 
production.  An  older  play,  entitled  All  is  True,  based  on 
unknown  incidents  of  the  same  reign,  was  on  the  boards  of 
the  Cilobe  Theatre  on  the  night  of  the  fire  in  161 3,  but  we 
have  no  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  the  magnificent 
Shakespearean  drama  of  Ilciiiy  /'///.,  at  least  in  the  form 
in  which  it  was  printed  in  the  Folio  ten  years  later. 

The  catastrophe  that  overwhelmed  Bacon  in  162 1  was 
one  of  the  saddest  in  the  annals  of  our  race.  No  wonder 
Timon  hurls  invectives  at  his  false  friends,  and  Cardinal 
Wolsey  utters  his  grand,  but  pathetic,  lament  over  fallen 
greatness!  Such  storms  of  feeling,  sweeping  over  a  human 
soul,  must  have  gathered  their  force  among  the  mountains 
and  valleys  of  a  mighty  personal  experience. 

The  most  astonishing  feature  of  this  contro\ersy  is  the 
light  it  has  thrown  on  the  literature  of  the  Flizabethan  age. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  57 

Among  the  great  men  who  made  that  age  famous,  no  one, 
with  the  exception  of  Jonson,  seems  to  have  taken  any  notice 
either  of  Shakespeare  or  of  the  subHme  creations  which  bear 
his  name.  Bacon's  silence,  itself  very  significant,  and  Jonson's 
doubtful  panegyrics  are  explained  ;  but  what  shall  we  say  of 
Raleigh,  Drake,  Herbert,  Pym,  and  the  rest?  Imagine  the 
inhabitants  of  Lilliput  paying  no  attention  to  Gulliver! 

"  Since  the  constellation  of  great  men  who  appeared  in  Greece 
in  the  time  of  Pericles,  there  was  never  any  such  society ;  yet 
their  genius  failed  them  to  find  out  the  best  head  in  the  universe." 
— Emerson. 

The  popular  prejudice  against  the  drama,  behind  which, 
as  an  almost  impenetrable  veil,  the  Shakespeare  Plays  were 
once  hid,  is  only  now  passing  away.  Josiah  Qtiincy  tells 
us  that,  as  late  as  in  1820,  as  whispered  among  the  boys 
fitting  for  college  at  Phillips  Academy  in  Andover,  Mass., 
a  professor  in  the  neighboring  theological  seminary  had 
among  his  books,  to  the  evident  jeopardy  of  his  soul,  the 
works  of  a  playwright,  named  Shakespeare ! 

If  Bacon  was  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  Plays,  as  it 
now  appears  probable  that  he  was,  it  is  difficult  to  exag- 
gerate, in  a  literary  point  of  view,  the  importance  of  the 
discovery.  'J'o  our  own  countrywoman,  Delia  Bacon,  be- 
longs the  everlasting  honor,  and  also,  alas!  in  the  long  line 
of  the  world's  benefactors,  the  crown  of  martxTdom. 


IV. 
OBJFXTIONS   CONSIDERED. 


As  counsel  for  defendant  may  be  disposed  at  this  point 
to  demur  to  the  evidence  and  thus  take  the  case  from  the 
jury,  we  feel  obliged  to  file  a  statement  of  facts  and  objec- 
tions on  the  other  side,  arranged  seriatim  in  the  inverse 
order  of  their  importance,  as  follows  : 

I.  From  1598,  when  the  publication  oj  the  Phtys  ceased  to 
be  anony/nous,  to  1848,  tvhen  Joseph  C.  Hart,  an  American, 
publicly  initiated  the  doubt  concerning  their  authorship,  a 
period  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  the  whole  tvorld,  nem. 
con.,  attributed  them  to  William  Shakespeare. 

The  Plays  came  into  existence  in  obscurity.  No  person 
appears  to  have  taken  the  slightest  interest  ''n  their  putative 
author.  His  very  insignificance  saved  him  from  prosecu- 
tion when  the  play  of  Richard  II.  was  used  by  Essex  for 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF,  59 

treasonable  ends.  And  the  same  indifference  to  him  con- 
tinued for  a  long  time  after  his  death.  The  critics  were  as 
blind  to  the  character  of  these  great  works  as  they  were, 
in  the  early  part  of  the  present  century,  to  the  merits  of 
Wordsworth,  whom  the  most  eminent  of  them  at  one  time 
flatly  denounced  as  little  better  than  an  idiot.  Wordsworth 
now  ranks  as  third  in  the  list  of  British  poets. 

Mr.  Appleton  Morgan,  in  his  brilliant  contribution  to 
the  literature  of  this  subject,  reminds  us  of  the  general 
contempt  in  which  the  Plays  were  buried  for  about  two 
hundred  years.  In  1661,  Evelyn  reports  that  they  "begin 
to  disgust  this  refined  age."  Pepys  preferred  Hudibras  to 
Shakespeare,  pronouncing  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  "  the 
most  insipid,  ridiculous  play  "  he  had  ever  seen.  In  1681, 
Tate,  a  poet  who  afterward  wore  the  laurel,  could  find  no 
epithet  sufficiently  opprobrious  to  express  his  opinion  of 
"  King  Lear,"  and  so  he  called  it  simply  "  a  thing."  In 
Hume's  condemnation,  Shakespeare  and  Bacon  were  yoked 
together  as  wanting  in  "  simphcity  and  purity  of  diction." 
Addison  styled  the  Plays  "very  faulty,"  and  Johnson 
asserted,  with  his  usual  emphasis,  that  Shakespeare  never 
wrote  six  consecutive  lines  "  without  making  an  ass  of  him- 
self." Dryden,  though  not  without  lucid  intervals  of  high 
appreciation,  still  regarded  Shakespeare  and  Fletcher  as 
"  below  the  dullest  writers   of  our  own   or  any  preceding 


6o 


BACox  VS.  shake.spp;ark. 


age,"  full  of  "  solecisms  of  speech,"  "  flaws  of  sense,"  and 
"ridiculous  and  incoherent  stories  meanly  written."  He- 
disapproved  altogether  of  Shakespeare's  style,  describing  it 
as  "pestered  with  figurative  expressions,"  "  aflfected  "  and 
"obscure."  John  Dennis  thouglit  himself  competent  to 
rewrite  the  Plays,  and  he  actually  put  one  or  two  of  them, 
"  revised  and  improved,"  on  the  boards  in  London,  appar- 
ently without  the  least  suspicion,  on  the  part  of  the  audiences 
that  witnessed  them,  of  any  sacrilege.  Another  astonishing 
critic  was  Rymer,  who  comes  to  us  indorsed  by  Pope  as 
"learned  and  strict."  He  says  of  Desdemona :  "There  is 
nothing  in  her  which  is  not  below  any  country  kitchen- 
maid  ;  no  woman,  bred  out  of  a  pig-sty,  could  talk  .so 
meanly."  The  "  Troilus  and  Cressida  "  he  called  a  "  heap 
of  rubbish." 

On    the   other  side,  we    have   a  stock  quotation   from 
Milton,  as  follow-s : 

"  Or  sweetest  Shakespeare,  Fancy's  child. 
Warble  his  native  wood-notes  wild," 

requiring  a  considerable  stretch  of  the  imagination  to 
apply  to  the  Plays.  Milton  was  a  Puritan,  and  probably 
never  soiled  liis  fingers  with  a  copv  of  them.  He  had  some 
knowledge  of  their  character,  to  be  sure,  for  he  accused 
Charles  I.  of  making  them  and  "  other  stuff  of  this  sort  " 
his  daily  reading.      Evidently,  in   Milton's  o])inion.  a  king 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  OI 

who  read  and  admired  Hamlet  or  Othello  deserved  to  lose 
his  head. 

With  such  sentiments  as  these  in  vogue  regarding  the 
Plays  themselves,  how  much  \alue  should  we  attach  to  the 
concurrent  belief  in  the  authorship  of  them  ?  Why  should 
men  look  upward  for  a  star,  when  they  are  content  to  see 
it  reflected  in  the  dirty  puddles  of  the  streets  ?  And  how 
natural,  under  a  law  of  moral  mechanics,  the  swinging  of 
pubhc  opinion,  from  bhnd  detraction  at  one  time  to  equally 
blind  idolatry  at  another  ! 

2.  //  is  hardly  conceivable  that  Bacon,  if  the  atithor  of  these 
7aorks,  7C'oi(l(l  not  have  claimed  the  credit  of  them  before  he 
died,  or,  at  least,  left  posthumous  proofs  that  would  have 
established  his  title  to  them. 

Bacon  had  one  great  aim  in  life,  an  aim  that,  it  seems  to 
us,  gave  a  fine  consistency  to  all  that  he  did.  He  sought 
to  instruct  in  better  ways  of  thinking,  not  his  own  gen- 
eration alone,  but  those  that  were  to  come  after.  "  I  feel 
myself  bom,"  he  says  in  one  of  his  letters,  "  for  the  service 
of  mankind."  Accordingly,  we  find  him  in  his  will  be- 
queathing sets  of  his  philosophical  works  and  his  essays  to 
the  chief  public  libraries  of  the  kingdom.  He  even  trans- 
lated them  into  Latin,  for  the  avowed  reason  that  our 
modern   languages  are  ephemeral,  while   Latin  will  last  as 


fi2  H\(f)N    VS.    SHAKKSPKARK. 

long  as  human  speech.  In  his  will,  also,  with  the  sublime 
confidence  that  is  inseparable  from  genius,  lie  left  his  name 
and  memory  to  the  "  ne.xt  ages." 

.\t  the  same  time,  he  .showed  no  anxiety  for  personal 
credit.  His  mind  was  bent  on  grander  results.  In  the 
introduction  to  one  of  his  books,  unpublished  at  the  time 
of  his  death,  he  asks  his  executors  to  leave  some  parts  of  it 
unprinted,  in  order  that  they  might  be  passed  in  manuscript 
"  from  hand  to  hand."  He  had  the  curious  conception 
that  in  this  impersonal  way  certain  truths  might  take  deeper 
root.     Then  follow  these  noble  words : 

"For  myself,  my  licart  is  not  set  upon  an)'  of  those  things 
which  depend  on  external  accidents.  I  am  not  hunting  for  fame. 
I  have  no  desire  to  found  a  sect,  after  the  fashion  of  the  heresi- 
archs  ;  and  to  loolv  for  any  private  gain  from  sucli  an  undertaking 
as  this,  I  should  consider  both  ridiculous  and  base.  Enough  for 
nic  the  consciousness  of  well-deserving,  and  those  real  and  efTect- 
ual  results  with  which  fortune  itself  cannot  interfere." 

The  ring  of  these  words  three  centuries  have  not  dulled. 
They  will  ring  through  all  time,  for  they  are  of  pure  gold. 

It  should  be  remembered,  too,  that  Bacon  had  an  am- 
bition to  occupy  his  father's  seat  on  the  woolsack,  and  that 
to  be  known  as  a  writer  of  plays  fc^r  money  would  have 
been  fatal  to  his  advancement.  After  his  downfall,  he  had 
not  the  heart,  if  he  had   the  will,  for  the   exposure.     He 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  63 

may  well  have  hesitated  to  make  another  in\-idious  con- 
fession in  the  face  of  a  frowning  world.* 

"The  question  why  Bacon,  if  he  were  the  composer  of  the 
Plays,  did  not  acknowledge  the  authorship,  is  not  difficult  to  an- 
swer. His  birth,  his  position  and  his  ambition  forbade  him,  the 
nephew  of  Lord  Burleigh,  the  future  Lord  Chancellor  of  England, 
to  put  his  name  on  a  play-bill.  In  the  interest  of  his  family  and 
of  his  political  career,  the  secret  must  be  so  strictly  preserved  that 
mere  anonymity  would  not  be  sufficient.  A  live  man-of-straw,  a 
responsible  official  representative  known  to  every  one,  was  re- 
quired. No  person  could  be  better  fitted  for  such  a  purpose  than 
an  actor,  wise  enough  to  understand  and  appreciate  what  was  to 
his  own  advantage.  Perhaps  this  "  Johannes  Factotum  '  of  Greene's 
did  not  know  the  name  of  his  benefactor.  But  even  if  he  did 
know  the  name,  it  was  obviously  to  his  interest  to  keep  from  the 
world,  and  particularly  from  his  gossiping  companions,  a  secret 
which  brought  him  money  and  fame." — Allgemeiiie  Zeitiiiig. 

3.  The  Plays  contain  anachronisms  and  other  errors  which 
Bacon,  "  who  took  all  knowledge  for  his  province,'''  could  not 
have  committed. 

Chief  among  the  errors  in  question,  of  sufficient  impor- 
tance to  be  noted  here,  are  the  following : 

*  A  French  critic  has  conjectured  that  Bacon  may  have  left  instructions  to 
his  executors  to  divulge  the  secret  at  some  opportune  time  after  his  death,  but 
that  the  alarming  growth  of  Puritanism,  culminating  in  its  complete  ascendency 
under  Cromwell  twenty-five  years  later,  rendered  such  a  step  inexpedient. 
Holding  his  reputation  in  trust  and  knowing  what  a  fierce  popular  storm  the 
announcement  would  cause,  they  may  have  deemed  it  their  duty  to  let  the 
Plays  remain  as  ■'  Mr.  William  Shakespeare's."  until  such  time  as  these  writings 
might  reveal  by  their  nwn  light  the  name  and  genius  of  the  author. 


6^  liACON     VS.    SHAki;siM.AKK. 

1 .  The  famous  one  in  the  quotation  from  Aristotle : 

"  Young  men  wlioni  Aristotle  thought  unfit  to  hear  moral 
philosophy." — Troilus  and  Cressida,  ii..  3. 

It  was />(;//'//( (//jihilosophy  that  Aristotle  referred  to  ;  hut 
Bacon  makes  the  same  mistake.  He  (juotes  the  (Ireek  as 
.saying : 

"  Young  men  are  no  fit  auditors  of  moral  philosophy."' 

Even  in  their  blunders,  our  two  authors  were  not  divided. 

2.  The  curious  conception  of  heat  in  its  '•  mode  of  mo- 
tion," one  flame  pushing  another  by  force  out  of  its  place. 

Shakespeare : 

"Even  as  one  heat  another  heat  e.\pels,  or  as  one  nail  by 
strength  drives  out  another. —  7\i<o  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  ii.,  4. 

"  One  fire  drives  out  one  fire  ;  one  nail,  one  Xi7i\\."  —  Co7iolanus, 
iv.,  7. 

Bacon : 

"  Flame  doth  not  mingle  with  flame,  but  remaineth  con- 
tiguous."— Advancenietit  of  Learning. 

"Clavum  clavo  pellere."  [To  drive  out  a  nail  with  a  nail.]— 
Prom  us. 

The  materiality  of  heat  was  a  dogma  of  the  ancients. 
It  lu'ld  almost  absolute  sway  over  mankind  till  long  after 
the  time  of  Francis  Bacon  ;  but  this  nail  illustration,  found 
in   Bacon's  intellectual  work-shop  and  reproduced  in  the 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  65 

Plays,  is  startling.      It  may  fairly   be  said  to  clinch  the 
argument. 

3.  Mark  Antony  tells  the  Romans  that  he  comes 

"  To  bury  Caesar,  not  to  praise  him," 
knowing  that  the  Romans  did  not  bury  the  bodies  of  their 
dead. 

The  play  was  written  for  an  English  stage,  and  for  an 
audience  to  whom  cremation  was  practically  unknown. 
The  reference  to  burial  indicates  the  art,  rather  than  the 
ignorance,  of  the  dramatist.  What  would  our  critics  say 
of  a  famous  actor  of  modern  times  who  always  armed  the 
Roman  guard  in  the  play  with  Springfield  muskets ! 

"  Shakespeare  turns  his  Romans  into  Englishmen,  and  he  does 
right,  for  otherwise  his  nation  would  not  have  understood  him." — 
Goethe. 

4.  A  Trojan  hero  quotes  Aristotle,  Cleopatra  plays  bill- 
iards, and  a  clock  strikes  the  hours  in  Ancient  Rome. 

Historical  perspective  is  not  necessary  to  the  drama. 
The  poet  sees  the  world  reflected  on  a  retina  that  ignores 
time  and  place.  He  idealizes  facts.  Egypt,  Greece, 
Rome,  Pericles,  Caesar,  are  so  many  stars  set  in  his  fir- 
mament and  shining  apparently  in  one  plane.  This  illu- 
sion   extended    even    to   the   accessories   of  the   stage  in 

Shakespeare's   day.     There   was   no   scenery  to  help   the 
5 


(>6  nACON    vs.     SHAKKSPKARK. 

spectators.*  Imagination  was  left  to  its  own  unaided 
wings,  with  nothing  l)ut  the  atmosphere  of  the  play  to 
sustain  ii.  At  the  call  of  the  magical  flute  piping  through 
the  universe,  billiards,  clocks.  Ilium,  all  local  and  tem- 
porary objects  of  sense,  "  shot  madly  from  their  spheres," 
in  blind  obedience  to  the  melody. 

"  Poesy  is  feigned  history,  which,  being  not  tied  to  the  laws  ol 
matter,  may  at  pleasure  join  that  which  nature  hath  severed,  and 
sever  that  which  nature  hath  joined,  and  so  make  unlawful 
matches  and  divorces  of  things."  * — Bacon. 

"There  is  no  reason  why  an  hour  should  not  be  a  centurj-  in 
the  calenture  of  the  brains  that  can  make  the  stage  a  field." — Dr. 
Johnson. 

Numerous  other  errors  of  a  minor  character  are  found  in 
the  Plays,  though,  like  the  spots  on  the  sun's  disk,  they  are 
lost  to  all  but  professional  observers  in  the  radiance  that 
envelops  them.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  however, 
these  very  blemishes  are  a  distinct  indication  of  Bacon's 
authorship,     ^^'e  find  the  same  in  his  prose  works.     The 


*  The  want  of  scenic  effects  is  thus  portrayed  by  Sir  Philip  Sydney  : 
"  Vou  shall  have  Asia  of  the  one  side  and  Africa  of  the  other,  and  so  many 
other  under  kingdoms  that  the  player  when  he  comes  in  must  ever  begin  with 
telling  where  he  is.  .  .  .  Now,  you  shall  have  three  ladies  walk  to  gather  flow- 
ers, and  then  you  must  believe  the  stage  to  be  a  garden  ;  by  and  by,  we  have 
news  of  a  shipwreck  in  the  same  place,  and  we  arc  to  blame  if  we  accept  it  not 
for  a  rock.  Upon  the  back  of  that  comes  a  hideous  monster,  with  fire  and  smoke, 
and  the  miserable  beholders  are  bound  to  take  it  for  a  cave  ;  while,  in  the  mean- 
time, two  armies  fly  in,  represented  with  four  swords  and  bucklers,  and  then 
what  hard  heart  will  not  receive  it  for  a  pitched  field  ?  " 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  67 

great  philosopher,  notwithstanding  his  industry  and  his 
learning,  was  singularly  careless  in  some  of  the  minutiae  of 
his  work.  The  sublime  confidence  with  which  he  employed 
his  mental  powers  often  made  a  "sinner  of  his  memory." 
It  was  simply  impossible,  in  the  multiplicity  and  magnitude 
of  his  productions,  particularly  if  the  Plays  be  superadded, 
to  prevent  unimportant  errors  from  creeping  in.  In  no 
other  way  can  we  account  for  the  false  quotation  from 
Solomon  in  the  Essay  of  Revenge,  or  that  from  Tacitus  in 
the  Essay  of  Traditions.  The  grammatical  mistakes  in  the 
Latin  entries  of  the  Promus,  written  with  his  own  hand, 
would  send  a  school-boy  to  the  bottom  of  his  class,  but 
they  put  a  tongue  in  every  wound  of  syntax  found  in  the 
Plays. 

In  this  connection,  it  may  be  not  be  amiss  to  quote  a 
few  of  Bacon's  Apothegms,  with  Devey's  notes  (Bohn's 
standard  edition)  appended  to  them,  as  follows  : 

"  Michael  Angelo,  the  famous  painter,  made  one  of  the  damned 
souls  in  his  portraiture  of  hell  so  like  a  cardinal,  his  enemy, 
as  everj'body  at  first  sight  knew  it.  Whereupon  the  cardinal 
complained  to  the  Pope,  humbly  praying  it  might  be  eflfaced.  The 
Pope  said  to  him,  '  Why,  you  know  verj-  well  I  have  power  to  de- 
liver a  soul  out  of  purgatory,  but  not  out  of  hell.' " 

The  victim  was  not  a  cardinal,  but  the  Pope's  master  of 
ceremonies. 


68  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

"A  king  of  Hungary  took  a  bisliop  in  battle,  and  kept  him 
prisoner.  Whereupon,  the  Pope  writ  a  monitory  to  him,  for  that 
he  had  broken  the  privilege  of  holy  church  and  taken  his  son. 
The  king,  in  reply,  sent  the  armor  wherein  the  bishop  was 
taken,  and  this  only  in  writing  :  '  Know  now  whether  this  be  thy 
son's  coat  ? '  " 

It  was  Richard  Cceur  de  Lion  who  did  this,  and  not  a 
king  of  Hungary. 

"  Antigonus,  when  it  was  told  him  that  the  enemj*  had  such  a 
volley  of  arrows  that  they  did  hide  the  sun,  said  :  '  That  falls  out 
well,  for  it  is  hot  weather,  and  so  we  shall  tight  in  the  shade.'  " 

This  was  a  speech,  not  of  Antigonus,  but  of  a  Spartan, 
previous  to  the  battle  of  Thermopylae. 

"One  of  the  seven  was  wont  to  say  that  laws  are  like  cob- 
webs, where  small  flies  are  caught,  but  the  great  break  through." 

This  was  said,  not  by  a  Greek,  but  by  Anacharsis,  the 
Scythian. 

"An  orator  of  Athens  said  to  Demosthenes:  "The  Athenians 
will  kill  3'ou  if  they  wax  mad.'  Demosthenes  replied:  'And 
they  will  kill  you  if  they  be  in  good  sense.'" 

This  retort  was  made  to  Demosthenes  by  Phocion. 

"  Demetrius,  king  of  Macedon,  had  a  petition  offered  him 
divers  times  b)-  an  old  woman,  and  answered  he  had  no  leisure. 
Whereupon  the  woman  said  aloud  :  '  Why,  then,  give  over  to  be 
king."  " 

This  happened,  not  to  Demetrius,  but  to  Philip. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  69 

"A  philosopher  disputed  with  Adrian,  the  emperor,  and  did 
it  but  weakly.  One  of  his  friends,  that  stood  bj-,  afterward  said 
to  him  :  '  Methinks  you  were  not  like  )-ourself  in  argument  with 
the  emperor.  I  could  have  answered  better  myself.'  'Why,' 
said  the  philosopher,  '  would  you  have  me  contend  with  him  that 
commands  thirty  legions  ? '  " 

This  took  place,  not  under  Adrian,  but  under  Augustus 
Csesar. 

"  Chilon  said  that  kings"  friends  and  favorites  are  like 
counters,  that  sometimes  stand  for  one,  sometimes  for  ten,  and 
sometimes  for  an  hundred." 

This  was  the  saying  of  Orontes. 

"Alexander,  after  the  battle  of  Granicum,  had  very  great 
oflFers  made  to  him  by  Darius  ;  consulting  with  his  captains  con- 
cerning them,  Parmenio  said  :  '  Sure,  I  would  accept  these  offers, 
if  I  were  Alexander.'  Alexander  answered:  'So  would  I,  if  I 
were  Parmenio.'  " 

This  happened  after  the  battle  of  Issus. 

The  above  are  gross  blunders,  far  more  astonishing  than 
any  found  in  the  works  of  Shakespeare.  Abbott  testifies 
on  this  point  as  follows  .- 

"We  have  abundant  proof  that  he  [Bacon]  was  eminently  in- 
attentive to  details.  His  scientific  works  are  full  of  inaccuracies. 
King  James  found  in  this  defect  of  his  Chancellor  the  matter  for 
a  witticism  :    '  De  minimis  itoii  curat  lex.'  ''  * 


*  The  law  takes  no  notice  of  trifles. 


•JO  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

4.  S/ui/cfspca/r  aiui  Bacon  'ivcn  of  essentially  itifferent 
types  of  mind,  the  iVo'i'inn  Origanum  and  the  conception  of 
Falstaff  being  trspcctively  at  opposite  poles,  and  ivholly  beyond 
the  range  of  one  man's  poicers. 

Bacon's  mind  had  as  many  facets  as  a  diamond ;  turn  it 
whichever  way  you  will,  it  gives  a  flash.  No  feature  of  it 
was  more  conspicuous,  in  the  eyes  of  his  contemporaries, 
than  his  wit.  It  was  simply  prodigious.  Ben  Jonson  says 
that,  even  on  solemn  occasions,  Bacon  could  with  difficulty 
"spare  or  pass  by  a  jest."  Macaulay  asserts  that  in  this 
respect  he  "  never  had  an  equal." 

"  He  possessed  this  faculty,  or  tliis  f.iculty  possessed  him,  in 
a  morbid  degree.  When  he  abandoned  himself  to  it  without 
reserve,  as  he  did  in  Sapientia  V'eterum,  or  at  the  end  of  the  second 
book  of  De  Auginentis,  the  feats  which  he  performed  were  not 
onl)'  admirable,  but  portentous  and  almost  shocking.  On  those 
occasions,  we  marvel  at  him  as  clowns  on  a  fair-day  marvel  at  a 
juggler,  and  can  hardly  help  thinking  that  the  devil  must  be  in 
him. " — Alacaulay. 

It  seems  like  pihng  Ossa  on  Pelion  to  add  that  tlie  world's 
most  famous  jest-book  we  owe  to  Francis  Bacon,  dictated 
by  him  from  a  sick-bed,  entirely  from  memory,  in  one  day. 
No  wonder  the  portly  Falstaff  sprang,  full-grown,  from 
such  a  brain  ! 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  7  ^^ 

5.  The  aittlior  of  the  Essay  on  Loi'e  could  not  have  -u'ritten 
Romeo  and  Juliet. 

The  two  productions  are  certainly  widely  dissimilar.  In 
one,  the  tender  passion  is  a  flower  in  bloom,  exquisitely 
sweet  and  beautiful ;  in  the  other,  it  is  torn  up  by  the  roots 
and  analyzed  scientifically,  not  to  say  contemptuously. 
Indeed,  Bacon  quotes  with  approval  an  old  saying  that  a 
man  cannot  love  and  be  wise. 

We  have  no  direct  evidence  to  show  that  the  author  of 
the  essay  did  not  possess  a  susceptible  heart.  To  be  sure, 
he  was  married  late  (at  the  age  of  forty-five),  and  was 
unfortunate  in  losing  the  affections  of  his  wife  before  he 
died.  It  may  be  worthy  of  note,  also,  that  the  play  was 
written  several  years  before,  and  the  essay  several  years 
after,  his  marriage.  We  cannot  admit,  however,  in  any 
view  of  his  matrimonial  adventure,  that  he  was  disqualified 
to  write  the  garden  scene  in  Romeo  and  JuUet.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  possess  a  trait  in  order  to  depict  it.  We 
instinctively  see  and  appreciate  what  is  exactly  opposite  tO' 
us  in  mental  aptitudes.  Human  nature  makes  an  uncon- 
scious effort  in  this  way  to  round  itself  out  into  the  com- 
plete and  perfect.  The  theory  of  complementary  colors  is 
based  on  this  tendency.  Unity  in  diversity  is  the  ideal  of 
married  life.  Tom  Hood  was  the  wittiest  of  men  and,  at 
the  same  time,  one  of  the  most  melancholv.      The  President 


7-2  BACON    VS.    SHAKKSPEARE. 

of  a  New  Kngland  Theological  Seminary,  who  was  very 
penurious,  preached  the  ablest  sermon  of  his  life  on  charity. 
The  people  of  Scotland  are  notoriously  intemperate  every 
Saturday  night ;  it  is  said  that  forty  thousand  persons  get 
drunk  at  that  time  in  the  city  of  Glasgow  alone  ;  and  yet 
the  finest  idyl  in  our  language,  consecrated  to  the  domes- 
tic peace  and  religious  .sanctity  of  that  season,  we  owe  to 
a  Scottish  poet,  himself  in  full  accord  with  the  habits  of 
his  countrymen.* 

6.  Amon^  Bacon's  kiioivn  ^corks,  wc  find  some  fragments 
of  verse  which  show  him  utterly  wanting  in  the  fine  phrensy 
of  the  poet. 

Bacon's  acknowledged  poetry,  it  is  .safe  to  say,  would 
not  have  made  him  immortal.  We  know  that  he  wrote  a 
sonnet  to  the  Queen,  but  unless  it  be  included  in  the 
Shakespeare  collection,  it  is  lost.  In  the  year  before  he 
died,  and  while  incapacitated  by  illness  for  good  work,  he 
paraphrased  a  few  of  the  Psalms,  which  he  afterward  pub- 
lished, and  which  would  seem  to  be,  at  first  sight,  only  so 
many  nails  driven  into  the  coffin  of  his  poetic  aspirations. 
It  is  manifestly  unfair,  however,  to  judge  of  his  capabihties 
in   this    hne    by   a  sick-bed   effort.      He   was   necessarilv 


♦  "A  New  View  of  the  Temperance  Question,"  2d  ed.,  p.  17. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  73 

hampered,  too,  by  the  restrictions  that  always  attend  the 
transplanting  of  an  exotic  in  full  bloom,  lest  the  little 
tendrils  of  speech  that  give  the  flower  its  beauty  and  fra- 
grance be  broken.  The  President  of  a  New  England  college 
once  made  a  similar  adventure  with  the  Psalms,  but,  when 
the  book  appeared,  the  author's  friends  bought  up  the 
entire  edition  and  suppressed  it. 

Fortunately,  we  have  a  specimen  of  Bacon's  poetry  for 
which  we  need  not  apologize.  This  is  also  a  translation, 
but,  being  in  the  precincts  of  profane  hterature,  it  justified 
a  freer  hand.     We  give  it  entire,  as  follows  : 

"  The  world's  a  bubble,  and  tlie  life  of  man 

Less  than  a  span; 
In  his  conception  wretched,  from  the  womb 

So  to  the  tomb: 
Cursed  from  his  cradle  and  brought  up  to  years 

With  cares  and  fears: 
Who,  then,  to  frail  mortality  shall  trust 
But  limns  the  water,  or  but  writes  in  dust. 

"  Yet  whilst  with  sorrow  here  we  live  oppressed. 

What  life  is  best? 
Courts  are  only  superficial  schools, 

To  dandle  fools. 
The  rural  parts  are  turned  into  a  den 

Of  savage  men; 
And  Where's  the  city  from  foul  vice  so  free 
But  may  be  termed  the  worst  of  all  the  three  ? 


74  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

"  Domestic  cares  afflict  the  luisband's  bed, 

Or  pain  his  head. 
Tliose  that  live  single  take  it  for  a  curse, 

Or  do  things  worse. 
Some  would  have  children;  those  that  have  tliem  moan. 

Or  wish  them  gone. 
What  is  it,  then,  to  have  or  have  no  wife. 
But  single  thralldom,  or  a  double  strife? 

"  Our  own  affections  still  at  home  to  please 

Is  a  disease; 
To  cross  the  seas  to  any  foreign  soil, 

Perils  and  toil. 
Wars  with  their  noise  affright  us;  when  they  cease, 

We're  worse  in  peace. 
What  then  remains,  but  that  we  still   should  crj- 
Not  to  be  born,  or,  being  born,  to  die?" 

It  is  not  known  when  the  above  was  written.  We  find 
it  for  the  first  time  in  a  volume  of  Greek  epigrams,  pub- 
hshed  in  1629,  three  years  after  Bacon's  death.  All  that 
is  claimed  for  it  is  a  high  degree  of  skill  in  versification,  the 
opportunity  not  admitting  a  flight  of  genius.  The  original 
is  a  dull,  placid  stream  flowing  through  a  meadow,  not  a 
cataract  from  a  mountain  height. 

To  know  Bacon  as  a  "  concealed  poet,"  we  must  study 
his  prose.  The  critics,  before  the  shadow  of  this  con- 
troversy fell  upon  them,  thus  described  it : 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  75 

"  In  this  band  of  scliolars,  dreamers,  and  inquirers  appears 
the  most  comprehensive,  sensitive,  originative  of  the  minds  of 
the  age,  Francis  Bacon;  a  great  and  luminous  intellect,  one  of 
the  finest  of  this  poetic  progeny." — Taiue. 

"  Like  the  poets,  he  peoples  nature  with  instincts  and  desires; 
attributes  to  bodies  an  actual  voracit}';  to  the  atmosphere,  a  thirst 
for  light,  sounds,  odors,  vapors,  which  it  drinks  in;  to  metals,  a 
sort  of  haste  to  be  incorporated  with  acids." — Idem. 

"  In  his  style  there  is  the  same  quality  which  is  applauded  in 
Shakespeare,  a  combination  of  the  intellectual  and  the  imagina- 
tive, the  closest  reasoning  in  the  boldest  metaphor." — Shaw. 

"The  utmost  splendor  of  imager)'." — Mackintosh. 

"  Like  unto  Shakespeare,  he  takes  good  note  of  any  deficiency 
of  sj'llabic  pulsations,  and  imparts  the  value  of  but  one  syl- 
lable to  the  dissyllables  heaven,  many,  even,  goeth;  and  to  glit- 
tering 2iXvA  chariot  but  the  value  of  two,  precisely  as  Shakespeare 
would." — Prof.  J.   W.   Tavener. 

"The  st)de  is  quaint,  original,  abounding  in  allusions  and 
witticisms,  and  rich,  even  to  gorgeousness,  with  piled-up  analo- 
gies and  metaphors." — Encyc.  Brit. 

"It  is  as  an  inspired  seer,  the  prose-poet  of  modern  science, 
that  I  reverence  Lord  Bacon." — Sir  Alexander  Grant. 

"  Lord  Bacon  was  a  poet.  His  language  has  a  sweet  and 
majestic  rhythm  which  satisfies  the  sense,  no  less  than  the  almost 
superhuman  wisdom  of  his  philosophy  satisfies  the  intellect.  It  is 
a  strain  which  distends  and  then  bursts  the  circumference  of  the 
reader's  mind,  and  pours  itself  forth  with  it  into  the  universal 
element  with  which  it  has  perpetual  sj'mpathy. 

"  Plato  exhibits  the  rare  union  of  close  and  subtle  logic  with 


76  ItACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

the  Pythian  enthusiasm  of  poetry,  melted  by  the  splendor  and 
harmony  of  his  periods,  which  hurry  the  persuasions  onward  as 
in  a  breathless  career.  His  language  is  that  of  an  immortal 
spirit  rather  than  a  man.  Lord  Bacon  is  perhaps  the  only  writer 
who  in  these  particulars  can  be  compared  with  him."* — Shelley. 

"No  man  ever  had  an  imagination  at  once  so  strong  and  so 
thoroughl)'  subjugated.  In  truth,  much  of  Bacon's  life  was 
passed  in  a  visionary  world,  amidst  things  as  strange  as  any  that 
are  described  in  the  Arabian  Tales." — Macaulay. 

"  He  seems  to  have  written  his  essays  with  the  pen  of  Shake- 
speare."— Alexander  Smith. 

It  is  admitted,  then,  that  Bacon  was  at  least  a  prose- 
poet.  No  man  ever  caught  more  quickly  or  aptly  the  re- 
semblances of  things  or  had  a  finer  ear  for  the  melody  of 
speech.  His  metaphors  trooped,  as  it  were,  to  the  sound 
of  music.  Professor  'I'avener  compares  his  cadences  to 
the  swinging  of  a  pendulum  beating  seconds.  We  know 
he  was  abnormally  sensitive  to  the  moods  of  nature,  for  he 
had  fainting  spells  at  every  eclipse  of  the  moon.  ^Ve  know 
he  had  a  passion  for  the  drama,  shown  by  the  part  he  took 
in  devising  stage  performances  before  the  court  and  in  the 

*  Our  attention  was  called  to  this  remarkable  testimony  of  the  poet  Shelley 
by  Mr.  R.  M  Theobald,  who  makes  the  following  comment:  "The  truth  is, 
that  while  the  critics  have  their  eye  on  the  Baconian  theory,  they  call  Bacon 
prosy,  unimaginative,  and  incapable  of  poetry.  When  they  sincerely  describe 
him,  they  one  and  all  assign  to  him  Shakespearean  attributes ;  so  that  if  you 
cull  the  eulogies  passed  on  Bacon,  you  have  a  portrait  of  the  author  of  Shake- 
speare.'" 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


77 


revels  at  Gray's  Inn.  We  know,  also,  he  had  an  inexhaust- 
ible fund  of  humor,  that  potu^ed  from  his  tongue  with  the 
ripple  of  laughing  waters,  and  needed  only  the  constraints 
of  a  written  dialogue  to  tumble  and  foam. 

These  considerations,  however,  leave  still  a  wide  chasm 
between  Bacon's  prose  and  the  Shakespeare  poetry.  The 
two  sets  of  works  seem  at  first  sight  to  differ,  not  in  degree 
only,  but  in  kind.  They  are,  indeed,  as  unlike  as  the 
caterpillar  and  the  butterfly,  one  walking  the  earth  and  the 
other  mounting  on  wings  into  the  air.  And  yet,  it  is 
diversity  of  conditions,  rather  than  that  of  personal  types, 
that  impresses  us  in  them.  They  imply  two  states  of  exist- 
ence, not  incompatible  in  one  person.  Goethe's  fine  instinct 
suspected  depths  of  meaning,  unknown  in  his  calmer  mo- 
ments to  himself,  in  the  second  part  of  Faust.  Natural 
orators  have  sometimes  wondered,  in  the  midst  of  their 
highest  flights,  what  strange  power  had  taken  possession  of 
their  mental  faculties.  .St.  Peter  protested  on  the  day  of 
Pentecost  that  he  was  not  drunken  with  wine,  though  the 
same  exaltation  of  spirit  gave  Spinoza  the  title  of  "  God- 
intoxicated." 

Here,  then,  are  two  spheres  in  which  every  human  soul, 
divinely  gifted,  may  have  a  dual  being.  In  the  higher, 
destined  perhaps  to  be  the  ultimate  for  all.  we  find  the 
seers  of  our  race.     No  Kepler  has  yet  discovered  the  laws 


;8  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

of  their  celestial  orbits,  but  Tlato  and  Emerson,  Beethoven 
and  Angelo,  Dante  and  Goethe,  give  us  some  knowledge 
of  their  mighty  sweep.  We  may  wait  centuries  before  a 
plummet,  like  Bessel's,  dropped  into  these  depths,  shall 
strike  bottom. 

Of  men  eminent  at  once  in  both,  Milton,  (ioethe,  and 
Poe  are  conspicuous  examples.  Milton's  Areopagitica  is 
a  "cloth  of  gold,"  worthy  of  the  author  of  Paradise  Lost, 
or  better  still,  according  to  some  critics,  of  Paradise  Re- 
gained. Goethe's  mind  worked  analytically  or  synthetically 
with  equal  power.  He  could  detect  a  vertebra  in  the 
formation  of  a  skull  as  readily  as  he  could  compress,  into 
the  experiences  of  one  man  subject  to  the  personal  guid- 
ance of  Satan,  the  history  of  the  human  race.  Poe's  lyric 
genius  was  the  greatest  America  ever  produced,  but  it  did 
not  prevent  him  from  giving  us,  in  feats  of  analytical 
legerdemain,  most  extraordinary  and  enduring  effects  in 
prose. 

The  question  arises,  was  Bacon  also  one  of  these  rare 
spirits  ?  To  determine  it,  why  not  bring  him  to  the  test 
of  the  rule  of  three  ?  Why  indulge  in  vague  generalities, 
however  learned  or  brilliant,  when  standards  of  comparison 
are  within  reach  ?  One  commentator,  for  instance,  sets  the 
"  dry  light  of  intellect  "  in  Bacon  over  against  the  ''  warm 
sunshine  "  of  Shakespeare ;  another  sees  radical  differences 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  79 

between  the  two  minds,  the  powers  of  one  being  analytical 
and  the  powers  of  the  other  synthetical.  Let  us  apply 
these  theories  mathematically,  taking  two  of  the  three 
known  terms  of  our  proportion  from  Milton.  The  ratios 
may  be  stated  thus  : 

Milton's  prose   :    Paradise  Lost    : :    Bacon's  prose   :    Hamlet. 

For  comparison,  we  select,  in  each  instance,  the  finest 
passage  the  genius  of  the  author  affords,  as  follows : 

Milton. — "Books  are  not  absolutely  dead  things,  but  do  con- 
tain a  potency  of  life  in  them,  to  be  as  active  as  that 
soul  whose  progeny  they  are  ;  nay,  they  do  preserve,  as 
in  a  vial,  the  purest  efficacy  and  extraction  of  that  living 
intellect  that  bred  them.  I  know  they  are  as  lively  and 
as  vigorously  productive  as  those  fabulous  dragons' 
teeth  ;  and,  being  sown  up  and  down,  may  chance  to 
spring  up  armed  men.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand, 
unless  wariness  be  used,  as  good  almost  kill  a  man  as 
kill  a  good  book  :  who  kills  a  man  kills  a  reasonable 
creature — God's  image  ;  but  he  who  destroys  a  good 
book  kills  reason  itself — kills  the  image  of  God,  as  it 
were,  in  the  eye.  Many  a  man  lives  a  burden  to 
the  earth  ;  but  a  good  book  is  the  precious  life-blood  of 
a  master-spirit,  embalmed  and  treasured  up  on  purpose 
to  a  life  beyond  life." — Areopagitica. 

"Thus  far  these,  be3ond 
Compare  of  mortal  prowess,  yet  observed 


8o  HACON    VS.    SHAKKlsl'tAKK. 

Tlitir  great  comiiiaiidtr;  lie,  above  llie  rest 

In  sliapc  and  gesture  proudly  eminent, 

Stood  like  a  tower;  his  form  had  not  yet  lost 

All  her  original  brightness,  nor  appear'd 

Less  than  arcliangel  ruin'd,  and  the  excess 

Of  glory  obscured;  as  when  the  sun,  new-risen, 

Looks  through  the  horizontal  misty  air 

Shorn  of  his  beams;  or  from  behind  tlie  moon, 

hi  dim  eclipse,  disastrous  twilight  sheds 

On  half  the  nations,  and  with  fear  of  change 

Perplexes  monarchs.      Darken'd  so,  yet  shone 

Above  them  all  the  Arch-angel;  but  his  face 

Deep  scars  of  thunder  had  intrench'd,  and  care 

Sat  on  his  faded  cheek;  but  under  brows 

Of  dauntless  courage  and  considerate  pride. 

Waiting  revenge."  Paradise  Lost. 

Bacon. — "  Prosperity  is  the  blessing  of  the  Old  Testament  ; 
adversity  is  the  blessing  of  the  New,  which  carrieth  the 
greater  benediction,  and  the  clearer  revelation  of  God's 
favor.  Yet  even  in  the  Old  Testament,  if  you  listen  to 
David's  harp,  you  shall  hear  as  many  hearse-like  airs  as 
carols  ;  and  the  pencil  of  the  Holy  Ghost  hath  labored 
more  in  describing  the  afflictions  of  Job  than  the  felici- 
ties of  Solomon.  Prosperity  is  not  without  many  fear^ 
and  distastes  ;  and  adversity  is  not  without  comforts 
and  hopes.  We  see  in  needleworks  and  embroideries, 
it  is  more  pleasing  to  have  a  lively  work  upon  a  sad 
and  solemn  ground,  than  to  have  a  dark  and  melan- 
choly work  upon  a  lightsome  ground:  judge,  therefore, 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  Si 

of  the  pleasure  of  the  heart  by  the  pleasure  of  the  eye. 
Certainly  virtue  is  like  precious  odors,  most  fragrant 
when  they  are  incensed  or  crushed  :  for  prosperity  doth 
best  discover  vice  ;  but  adversity  doth  best  discover 
virtue." — Essay  of  Adversity. 

'  To  be,  or  not  to  be:   that  is  the  question; 

Whether  'tis  nobler  in  the  mind  to  suffer 

The  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune, 

Or  to  take  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles, 

And  by  opposing  end  them?     To  die:  to  sleep; 

No  more;  and  bj^  a  sleep  to  say  we  end 

The  heart-ache  and  the  thousand  natural  shocks 

That  fiesh  is  heir  to;  'tis  a  consummation 

Devoutly  to  be  wish'd.     To  die,  to  sleep; 

To  sleep:  perchance  to  dream;  ay,  there's  the  rub; 

For  in  that  sleep  of  death  what  dreams  may  come 

When  we  have  shuffled  off  this  mortal  coil. 

Must  give  us  pause:  there's  the  respect 

That  makes  calamity  of  so  long  life; 

For  who  would  bear  the  whips  and  scorns  of  time, 

The  oppressor's  wrong,  the  proud  man's  contumely, 

The  pangs  of  despised  love,  the  law's  delaj', 

The  insolence  of  office,  and  the  spurns 

That  patient  merit  of  the  unworthy  takes, 
******* 

But  that  the  dread  of  something  after  death. 

The  undiscovered  country  from  whose  bourn 

No  traveler  returns,  puzzles  the  will 

And  makes  us  rather  bear  the  ills  we  have 
6 


82  BACON    VS.    SlIARESI'KAKt;. 

Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of? 

Thus  conscience  does  make  cowards  of  us  all; 

And  thus  the  native  luie  of  resolution 

Is  sicklied  o'er  witli  the  pale  cast  of  thought, 

And  enterprises  of  great  pith  and  moment 

With  this  regard  their  currents  turn  awry, 

And  lose  the  name  of  action."  Hamlet. 

Here  is  a  nice  literary  problem.  In  Milton,  we  have  an 
eloquent  eulogy  of  good  books,  and,  following  this,  the 
grandest,  most  terrible  figure  the  eye  of  imagination  ever 
beheld.  Boldness,  originality,  subhmity  characterize  both. 
The  image  of  God  shining  upon  us  through  the  clear  light 
of  knowledge,  and  that  of  the  ruined  archangel  like  the  sun 
seen  through  a  mist,  are  metaphors  so  striking  and  at  the 
same  time  so  similar  that  under  any  circumstances,  it  woukl 
seem,  we  might  have  suspected  their  common  origin.  Cer- 
tainly the  two  specimens  are  pitched  in  the  same  lofty  key. 

Turning  to  the  couplet  from  Bacon,  what  do  we  find  ] 
An  intellect  of  a  wholly  different  type,  at  once  incisive  and 
profound,  grasping  principles  as  firmly  as  Jupiter  grasped 
thunder-bolts,  and  wielding  them  with  a  briUiancy  that  is 
almost  dazzling.  The  two  passages,  from  the  Essay  and 
from  Hamlet,  illustrate  almost  precisely  the  same  mental 
qualities.  They  are  both  philosophical.  They  deal  analyt- 
ically, one  with  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  this  world,  and 
the  other  with  doubts  and  misgivings  on  the  perilous 
edge   of  the   next.     There  is  no  spiritual  rift,  and  con.se- 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  83 

quently  no  "  warm  sunshine  "  pouring  down  through  the 
clouds,  in  either. 

"The  truth  is  that  Bacon  was  not  without  the  fine  frenzy  of  the 
poet." —  Spedding. 

7.  Bacon's  want  of  natural  sy/iipathy,  as  shoion  in  his 
treatment  of  Essex,  fails  to  satisfy  our  ideal,  derived  from  the 
dramas  themselves,  of  their  great  author;  for  the  world  has 
bestowed  upon  Shakespeare  not  only  its  reverence,  but  its  love. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  author  of  the  Plays  possessed 
a  heart  of  the  most  tender  sensibiUties.  Like  the  tides  of 
the  ocean,  his  sympathies  were  "  poured  round  all,"  pene- 
trating every  bay,  creek,  and  river  of  human  experience. 
The  voyager  o'er  the  mighty  current  of  his  thought  always 
feels  embarked  on  the  bosom  of  the  unbounded  deep.  It 
is  not  enough,  therefore,  that  Bacon  was  a  man  of  lofty 
aims ;  that  he  devoted  his  great  powers  with  tireless  as- 
siduity to  the  interests  of  mankind ;  was  he  also  of  that 
rare  type  of  character  that,  with  greatness  of  intellect, 
glows  and  scintillates  at  every  touch  of  feeling  ? 

This  brings  us  to  a  most  important  test,  the  personahty 
of  Lord  Bacon  himself.  Time  has  scarcely  dimmed  his 
figure ;  we  know  him  almost  as  intimately  as  though  he 
were  walking  our  streets.  We  see  him  gathering  violets 
in  his  garden,  stringing  pearls  of  thought  in  his  essays, 
swaying  the  House  of  Commons  with  his  eloquence,  hold- 
ing the  scales  of  justice  in  the  coiuts,  marking  the  trend  of 


S4  BACON    VS.    SlIAKKSl'KAKK. 

social  progress  in  his  histories,  and  breaking  the  chains  that 
had  bound  the  human  intellect  from  the  days  of  Aristotle. 
His  mind  and  heart  were  in  touch  with  every  interest  of 
mankind.  He  was  poet,  orator,  naturahst,  physician,  his- 
torian, essayist,  philosopher,  statesman,  and  judge.  No 
man  ever  filled  more  comjjletely  the  ideal  of  the  Roman  poet : 

"Homo  stun  ;  htiiiiani  nihil  a  vie  alicntitn  pulo." 

'  The  small,  fine  mind  of  LabruyCre  had  not  a  more  delicate 
tact  than  the  large  intellect  of  Bacon.  His  understanding  resem- 
bled the  tent  which  the  fairy  Parabanon  gave  to  Prince  Ahmed. 
Fold  it,  and  it  seemed  a  toy  in  the  hand  of  a  lady  ;  spread  it,  and 
the  armies  of  powerful  sultans  might  repose  beneath  its  shade." — 
Macaulay. 

"  A  soft  voice,  a  laughing  lip,  a  melting  heart,  made  him  hosts 
of  friends.  No  child  could  resist  the  spell  of  his  sweet  speech,  of 
his  tender  smile,  of  his  grace  without  study,  his  frankness  with- 
out guile." — llcp'i'orth  Dixon. 

He  is  accused  of  ingratitude  toward  his  friend  Essex, 
because,  first,  he  appeared  against  the  accused  at  the  trial ; 
and,  secondly,  because  by  superior  tactics  he  was  the  means 
of  insuring  conviction. 

On  the  first  point,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  Bacon  was 
present  as  an  officer  of  the  crown  at  the  express  command 
of  the  Queen,  having  repeatedly  forewarned  the  Earl  of 
the  result  of  his  evil  courses,  and  duly  notified  him  that. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  85 

on  any  breach  of  the  peace,  he  himself  would  support  the 
government.  On  the  second,  he  was  prominent  in  the 
proceedings  because  his  mental  stature  made  him  promi- 
nent. As  well  attempt  to  force  an  oak  back  into  its  acorn 
as  to  bring  Francis  Bacon  on  any  occasion  down  to  the 
level  of  ordinary  men.* 

In  the  matter  of  the  bribes,  he  suflfered  for  the  sins  of 
society.  So  far  as  he  was  personally  culpable,  it  is  manifest 
from  his  subsequent  demeanor  that  chronic  carelessness  in 
money  matters,  and  not  any  guile,  was  at  the  bottom  of 
the  difficulty. t 

*  That  Bacon  felt  himself  compromised  in  public  estimation  we  know  verj- 
well,  for  in  a  letter  to  the  Queen  he  says: 

"  My  life  has  been  threatened  and  my  name  libeled." 
We  find  the  same  lament  in  one  of  his  sonnets,  as  follows: 
"  Then  hate  me  if  thou  wilt;  if  ever,  now, 
Now  while  the  world  is  bent  my  deeds  to  cross, 
Join  with  the  spite  of  fortune."  Sonnet  XC. 

In  another  sonnet,  the  author  expresses  fear  of  assassination,  anticipating 
"  The  coward  conquest  of  a  wretch's  knife."  LXX. 

t  Bacon's  want  of  attention  to  his  personal  finances  (a  not  uncommon 
failing  in  great  men,  due  to  a  sort  of  instinct  that  the  matter  is  beneath  them") 
caused  his  mother  the  most  lively  concern.  She  even  interfered  at  one  time  to 
protect  him  from  his  own  servants.  Spedding  tells  the  following  story  in 
point : 

"  In  the  year  1655,  a  book-seller's  boy  heard  some  gentlemen  talking  in  his 
master's  shop;  oneoftliem,  a  gray-headed  man,  wasdescribing  a  scene  which  he 
had  himself  witnessed  at  Gorhambury.  He  had  gone  to  see  the  lord  chancel- 
lor on  business,  who  received  him  in  his  study  and.  having  occasion  to  go  out, 


S6  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARL. 

"No  one  mistook  the  condemnation  for  a  moral  censure;  no 
one  treated  Lord  St.  Albans  as  a  convicted  judge.  The  House 
of  Commons  had  refused  to  adopt  the  charge  of  bribery;  the 
House  of  Lords  had  rejected  the  attempt  to  brand  him  with  a 
personal  shame;  and  society  treated  the  event  as  one  of  those 
struggles  for  place  which  may  hurt  a  man's  fortunes  without 
hurting  his  fame.  The  most  noble  and  most  generous  men,  the 
best  scholars,  the  most  pious  clergymen,  gathered  round  him  in 
his  adversit}',  more  loving,  more  observant,  more  reverential, 
than  they  had  ever  been  in  his  da3's  of  splendor. 

"  Such  was  also  the  reading  of  these  transactions  by  the  most 
eminent  of  foreign  ministers  and  travelers.     The  French  Marquis 


left  him  there  for  awhile  alone.  '  Whilst  his  lordship  was  gone,  there  comes,' 
he  said,  'into  the  study  one  of  his  lordship's  gentlemen,  and  opens  my  lord's 
chest  of  drawers  wherein  his  money  was,  takes  it  out  in  handfuls,  fills  his 
pockets,  and  goes  away  without  saying  a  word  to  me.  He  was  no  sooner  gone 
but  comes  another  gentleman,  opens  the  same  drawers,  fills  both  his  pockets  with 
money,  and  goes  away  as  the  former  did,  without  speaking  a  word.'  Bacon, 
being  told  when  he  came  back  what  had  passed  in  his  absence,  merely  shook 
his  head,  and  all  he  said  was,  'Sir,  I  cannot  help  myself.'" 
Montagu  relates  another  incident  to  the  same  eifect: 

One  day,  immediately  after  Bacon's  removal  from  the  chancellorship,  he 
happened  to  enter  his  servants'  hall  while  they  were  at  dinner.  On  their  rising 
(about  one  hundred  in  number)  to  receive  him,  he  said  :  •"  Be  seated;  your 
rise  has  been  my  fall." 

"  His  principal  fault  seems  to  have  been  the  excess  of  that  virtue  which  cov- 
ers a  multitude  of  sins.  This  betrayed  him  to  so  great  an  indulgence  toward 
his  serv-ants,  who  made  a  corrupt  use  of  it,  that  it  stripped  him  of  all  those 
riches  and  honors  which  a  long  series  of  merits  had  heaped  upon  him." — Addi- 
son. 

"Bacon  was  generous,  easy,  good  natured,  and  naturallv  just ;  but  he  had 
the  misfortune  to  be  beset  by  domestic  harpies  who,  in  a  manner,  farmed  out 
his  office."  —  Guthrie. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  87 

d'Effiat,  the  Spanish  Conde  de  Goiidomar,  expressed  for  him  in 
his  fallen  fortunes  the  most  exalted  veneration.  That  the  judges 
on  the  bench,  that  the  members  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament, 
even  those  who,  at  Buckingham's  bidding,  had  passed  against 
him  that  abominable  sentence,  concurred  with  the  inost  eminent 
of  their  contemporaries,  native  and  alien,  is  apparent  in  the 
failure  of  every  attempt  made  to  disturb  his  judicial  decisions. 
These  efforts  failed  because  there  was  no  injustice  to  overthrow, 
and  there  was  no  injustice  to  overthrow  because  there  had  been 
no  corruption  on  the  bench." — Dixon. 

History  presents  to  us  no  more  pathetic  figure  than  that 
of  the  great  Lord  Bacon  beseeching  in  vain  that  he  might 
not  be  compelled  to  close  his  career — a  career  of  unex- 
ampled usefulness  to  the  world — in  ignominy.  The  author- 
ities that  condemned  him  remind  us  of  a  pack  of  wolves, 
turning  upon  and  rending  a  wounded  comrade. 


V. 

Let  us  now  examine  the  internal  evidences,  presented  in 
the  Plays  themselves,  of  Bacon's  authorship. 

a.  A  prominent  characteristic  of  Bacon  in  his  literary 
work  was  the  frequency  with  which  he  invented  new  words. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  no  other  writer,  with  possibly  one 
exception,  ever  did  so  much  to  diversify  and  enrich  our 
English  tongue.  We  find  many  of  these  words  actually 
taking  shape  before  our  eyes  in  the  Promus,  perhaps  a  bright 
nucleus  from  the  Latin  in  a  nebulous  envelope  of  pre- 
fixes and  suflfixes,  preparing  to  shine  forever,  with  a  radiance 
of  its  own,  in  human  speech. 

In  this  business  of  word-building,  however,  Bacon  had  a 
strange  double.  It  is  estimated  that  Shakespeare  gave 
five  thousand  new  words,  inclusive  of  old  words  with  new 
meanings,  to  our  language.  And  these  additions  were  also, 
like  Bacon's,  derived  chiefly  from  the  Latin.  They  were 
such  as  only  a  scholar  could  impose  upon  the  king's  ver- 
nacular.* 


*  Hallam  calls  attention  to  Shakespeare's    fondness  for  words  in    their 
primitive  meanings.     He  sees  a  student's  instinct  in  this  attempt,  contrary  in 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


89 


b.  Bacon  had  also  a  wonderful  variety  at  his  command 
in  manner  of  writing.  In  this  respect,  he  was  a  literary 
chameleon.     Abbott  says  of  him  : 

"His  style  varied  almost  as  much  as  his  handwriting;  but  it 
was  influenced  more  by  the  subject  matter  than  by  youth  or  old 
age.  Few  men  have  shown  equal  versatility  in  adapting  their 
language  to  the  slightest  change  of  circumstance  and  purpose. 
His  stj-le  depended  upon  whether  he  was  addressing  a  king,  or  a 
great  nobleman,  or  a  philosopher,  or  a  friend  ;  whether  he  was 
composing  a  state  paper,  magnifying  the  prerogative,  extolling 
truth,  discussing  studies,  exhorting  a  judge,  sending  a  New 
Year's  present,  or  sounding  a  trumpet  to  prepare  the  way  for  the 
kingdom  of  man  over  nature." 

It  does  not  follow,  of  course,  that  because  he  had  this 
"  wonderful  ductility,"  as  Hallam  calls  it,  therefore  he 
wrote  the  Plays.  The  converse  of  the  proposition,  how- 
ever, is  worth  noting,  viz. :  without  it,  he  would  have  been 
disqualified  for  the  task. 

c.  Again,  Bacon  was  constantly  making  alterations  in 
his  writings,  even  after  they  had  gone  to  press.  Of  the 
ten  essays  which  he  published  in  1597,  nearly  all  were  more 

many  cases  to  popular  usage,  to  keep  our  language  true  to  its  Latin  roots.  The 
following  are  a  few  examples  :  "  Things  base  and  vile,  holding  no  quantify  " 
(for  value) ;  "  rivers,  that  have  overborn  their  continents  "  (the  continente  rif>a 
of  Horace) ;  "  imagination  all  contj>act "  ;  "  something  of  great  constancy  "  (for 
consistency) ;  "  sweet  Pyramus  translated  there  "  ;  "  the  law  of  Athens,  which 
by  no  means  we  may  extenuated 


90  liACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARK. 

or  less  changed  and  enlarged  for  the  edition  of  1612. 
Those  of  161 2,  including  the  ten  before  mentioned,  were 
again  enlarged  for  publication  in  1625.  It  seems  to  have 
been  almost  impossible  for  an  essay  to  get  to  the  types  a 
second  time  without  passing  through  his  reforming  hand, 
in  one  instance  actually  losing  identity  in  the  transition. 

This  was  precisely  the  fate  of  the  Plays.  Some  of  them 
underwent  complete  transformation  between  the  quartos 
and  the  folio,  becoming  practically  new  compositions,  and, 
what  is  very  singular,  working  away  from  the  requirements 
of  the  stage  into  forms  more  purely  artistic  and  literary. 

If  there  were  two  workshops,  it  is  certain  that  one  set 
of  rules  governed  both. 

d.  Bacon's  sense  of  humor,  as  has  already  been  shown, 
was  phenomenal,  and  yet  it  had  one  curb  which  it  always 
obeyed.  In  his  Essay  of  Discourse,  he  lays  down  the  rule, 
among  others,  that  religion  should  never  be  the  butt  of  a 
jest.  Accordingly,  it  is  impossible  to  find,  in  all  the  wild, 
rollicking  fun  of  the  Plays,  even  a  flippancy  at  the  expense 
of  the  Church. 

e.  Bacon  was  very  fond  of  puns.  He  not  only  handed 
down  to  posterity  numerous  specimens  found  in  his  reading, 
but  he  immortalized  some  of  his  own  in  the  Apothegms. 
The  Spanish  Ambassador,  a  Jew,  happening  to  leave  Eng- 
land Easter  morning,  paid  his  parting  respects  to   Bacon, 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


91 


wishing  him  a  good  Easter.  Bacon  replied,  wishing  his 
friend  a  good  pass-over.  The  Plays  also  abound  in  this 
species  of  wit.  A  remarkable  instance  may  be  quoted  from 
the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  thus : 

"  Evans  :  Acciisativo,  king,  Jiang,  hog. 
Quick  :  Hang  hog  is  Latin  for  bacon,  I  warrant  you." 

Act  iv.,  I. 

This  refers  to  a  pun  perpetrated  by  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon, 
father  of  Francis.  One  day  a  culprit,  named  Hog,  appealed 
to  Judge  Bacon's  mercy  on  the  ground  that  they  were  of 
the  same  family.  "  Aye,"  replied  the  Judge,  "  you  and  I 
cannot  be  kindred  except  you  be  hanged ;  for  hog  is  not 
bacon  until  it  be  well  hanged." 

The  appearance  of  this  family  pun  in  the  Plays  is 
significant. 

/.  Bacon's  prose  works  overflow  with  citations  from 
classical  Hteratiu"e.  They  are  filled  to  saturation  with 
ancient  lore.  This  is  true  also  of  the  Plays.  They  make 
us  breathe  the  very  air  of  Greece  and  Rome.  The  follow- 
ing is  only  a  partial  list  of  the  classical  authors,  the  in- 
fluence of  whose  writings  has  been  traced  in  them  :  Homer, 
Plato,  Aristotle,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  ^schylus,  Lucian, 
Galen,  Ovid,  Lucretius,  Tacitus,  Horace,  Virgil,  Plutarch, 
Seneca,  Catullus,  Livy,  and  Plautus,  all  of  whom  were 
known  to  Bacon.     A  curious  instance  is  the  following : 


g2  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPKAKK. 

"  Th_v  promises  are  like  Adonis'  gardens, 

That  one  day  bloomed  and  fruitful  were  the  next." 

/■'trs/  JIniry   I'L,  i.,  6. 

This  reference  puzzled  all  the  commentators  for  nearly 
three  hundred  years,  Richard  Grant  White  declaring  that 
"  no  mention  of  any  such  gardens  in  the  classic  writings  of 
Greece  or  Rome  is  known  to  .scholars."  It  has  recently 
been  found,  however,  in  Plato's  J^iednts,  a  work  that 
had  not  been  translated  into  English  in  Shakespeare's 
time. 

"  It  is  the  ease  and  naturalness  with  which  the  classical  al- 
lusions are  introduced  to  which  it  is  the  most  important  that  we 
should  attend.  The}-  are  not  purple  patches  sewed  on  to  a  piece 
of  plain  homespun  ;  they  are  inwoven  in  the  web." 

"  He  [Farmer]  leaves  us  at  full  liberty,  for  anything  he  has  ad- 
vanced, to  regard  Shakespeare  as  having  had  a  mind  richly 
furnished  with  the  mythology  and  history  of  the  times  of  an- 
tiquity, an  intimate  and  inwrought  acquaintance,  such  as  perhaps 
few  profound  scholars  possess." — Hunter. 

g.  Bacon's  paramount  aspiration  was  to  possess  and  im- 
part wisdom.  He  was  indefatigable  in  his  search  for  it, 
analvzing  motives  and  turning  the  light  of  his  genius  upon 
the  most  hidden  springs  of  conduct.  Nothing  was  too  re- 
mote or  recondite  for  his  use.  It  was  inevitable,  then,  that 
his  mind  should  fall  easily  and  naturally  into  those  chan- 
nels of  thought  which  the  "  wit  of  one  and   the  wisdom  of 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  93 

many  "  have  worn  deep  in  human  experience.  The  Promus 
fairly  sparkles  with  proverbs.  Nearly  every  known  lan- 
guage appears  to  have  been  ransacked  for  them.  From 
the  Promus  they  were  poured  copiously  into  the  Plays. 
Mrs.  Pott  finds  nearly  two  thousand  instances  in  which  they 
beautify  and  enrich  these  wonderful  works. 

"  In  Bacon's  works  we  find  a  multitude  of  moral  sayings  and 
maxims  of  e-\perience,  from  which  the  most  striking  mottoes 
might  be  drawn  for  every  play  of  Shakespeare,  aye,  for  every  one 
of  his  principal  characters  .  .  .  testifying  to  a  remarkable  har- 
mony in  their  mutual  comprehension  of  human  nature." — Gervimis. 

/i.  Bacon's  whole  life  was  passed  in  the  atmosphere  of 
the  court.  At  the  age  of  ten,  he  was  patted  on  the  head 
by  Queen  Ehzabeth  and  called  her  "  young  lord  keeper." 
When  sixteen,  he  went  to  Paris  in  the  suite  of  the  British 
Ambassador,  and  lived  three  years  in  that  gay  capital  and 
its  vicinity,  studying  not  only  the  arts  of  diplomacy,  but  all 
the  penetralia  of  court  life.  On  his  return  he  was  freely 
admitted  to  the  presence  of  royalty,  was  the  friend  of 
princes,  and,  filling  the  highest  ofiices  in  the  gift  of  the 
King,  was  elevated  to  the  peerage.  It  is  not  surprising, 
therefore,  that  the  Plays,  almost  without  exception,  have 
their  movement  in  the  highest  circles  of  society.  The 
common  people  are  kept  in  the  background,  and  are  re- 
ferred to  in  terms,  often  bordering  on  contempt,  that  show 
the  author  not  to  be  one  of  them. 


94  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPliARK. 

"  Shakespeare  despised  tlie  million,  and  Bacon  feared  with 
Phocion  the  applause  of  the  multitude.'' — Gen'iniis. 

i.  Bacon  was  continually  hiding  his  personality  under 
disguises.  One  of  the  first  acts  of  his  public  career  was  to 
invent  a  cipher  for  letter- writing.  He  even  invented  a 
cipher  within  a  cipher,  so  that,  if  the  first  should  by  any 
chance  be  disclosed,  the  other,  imbedded  in  it,  would 
escape  detection.  At  one  time,  he  carried  on  a  fictitious 
correspondence,  intended  for  the  eye  of  the  Queen,  be- 
tween his  brother  Anthony  and  the  Earl  of  Essex,  com- 
posing the  letters  on  both  sides  and  referring  to  himself  in 
the  third  person.  He  published  one  of  his  philosophical 
works  under  a  pseudonym,  and  another,  as  though  it 
were  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients  stored  in  fables.  Ben 
Jonson,   in   a  poem  addressed  to   Bacon   on  one  of  his 

birthdays,  says : 

"  In  the  midst 

Thou  stand's!  as  though  a  mystery  thou  didst." 

J.  Early  in  life.  Bacon  determined  to  make  all  knowledge 
his  province.  He  became  fired  with  this  ambition  at  col- 
lege, when  he  discovered  that  the  authority  of  Aristotle, 
then  supreme  over  the  minds  of  men,  was  based  on  erro- 
neous postulates.  Accordingly,  he  resolved,  single-handed, 
to  demolish  the  whole  structure  of  philosophy  as  it  then 
existed,  and  to  rebuild  it  upon  foundations  laid  by  himself. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


95 


To  accomplish  this,  he  knew  he  must  compass  all  the 
knowledge  of  his  time,  as  the  great  Stagirite  had  done  be- 
fore him.  How  well  and  faithfully  he  fulfilled  his  task, 
let  the  gratitude  and  veneration  of  mankind  make  answer. 
Among  the  names  of  the  five  most  illustrious  men  of  all  the 
world,  Bacon's  has  a  place,  and  that  place  at  or  near  the 
head. 

Of  the  various  arts  and  sciences  into  which  he  pushed 
his  investigations,  we  may  specify  the  following : 
Philosophy. — Bacon  has  been  called  the  father  of  induct- 
ive philosophy,  because  he,  more  than  any  other, 
taught  the  natural  method  of  searching  for  truth. 
Before  his  time,  men  had  conceived  certain  prin- 
ciples to  be  true,  and  from  them  had  reasoned  down 
to  facts.  The  consequence  was  that  facts  became 
more  or  less  warped  to  fit  theories,  and  the  discov- 
ery of  new  facts,  out  of  harmony  with  the  theories, 
a  matter  of  regret,  and  even  of  condemnation. 
Under  this  system,  obviously,  the  world  could  make 
but  slow  progress. 

Bacon  started  at  the  other  end.  He  hitched  his 
wagon  not  to  a  star,  but  to  nature.  He  taught 
men  to  reason  upward,  and,  if  he  did  not  himself 
soar  into  the  empyrean,  it  was  because  the  work  of 
collating  what  is  known  must  always  precede  those 


96  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

great  generalizations  which  arc  the  final  object  of 
human  thought. 

It  is  in  this  domain  of  practical  experience  that 
we  find  the  secret  of  the  immortality  of  the  Plays. 
They  illustrate  the  same  kind  of  philosojjhy  that 
Bacon  expounded  in  his  prose  works.  How  un- 
erring the  instinct  with  which  the  dramatist  analyzes 
the  human  heart !  In  both  authors,  analysis  pre- 
cedes synthesis,  as  the  foundations  of  the  temple 
must  be  laid  before  the  dome  can  spring  into  the 
sky. 

"  A  similar  combination  of  different  mental  powers  was 
at  work  in  ihem  ;  as  Shakespeare  was  often  philosophical 
in  his  profoundness,  Bacon  was  not  seldom  surprised  into 
the  imagination  of  the  poet." — Gervimis. 

Bacon's  contempt  for  his  jjredecessors  in  this 
branch  of  learning  is  well  reflected  in  the  Plays. 
Note  the  following : 

"There  was  never  yet  philosopher 
That  could  endure  the  tooth  ache  patienth." 

JMtich  Ado  about  Nothing,  v.,  I. 

"  I  am  not  mad     I  would  to  heaven  I  were  ; 
For  then  'tis  like  I  should  forget  myself; 
O.  if  I  could,  what  grief  should  I  forget ! — 
Preach  some  philosophy  to  make  me  mad." 

King  John,  iii.,4. 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


97 


Sir  Hugh  Evaus,  in  the  Merry  IVii'es  of  11  indsor,  con- 
tends that  lips  are  a  part  of  the  mouth,  and  claims  to  be 
supported  in  that  view  by  "divers  philosophers." 

Into  what  a  terrible  abyss  does  the  stream  of  philos- 
ophy plunge  in  the  only  play  located  at  Athens  ! 

History. — Historical  literature  had  a  special  charm  for 
Bacon.  His  history  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VII.  is 
an  English  classic  ;  his  portraiture  of  Juhus  Caesar, 
an  epitome  of  one  of  the  world's  most  interesting 
and  important  epochs. 

Shakespeare's  mind  ran  in  the  same  channels. 
Nearly  half  the  Plays  are  historical.  And  they  deal 
with  those  periods  to  which  Bacon  gave  particular 
attention,  the  English  Henries  and  the  career  of 
Rome. 

"  '  Where  have  you  learned  the  history  of  England  ?'  it 
was  asked  of  the  greatest  statesman  of  the  last  century. 
Lord  Chatham  replied  :  '  In  the  plays  of  Shakespeare.'  " — 
Dean  Stanley. 

■' The  marvelous  accuracy,  the  real,  substantial  learn- 
ing of  the  three  Roman  plays  of  Shakespeare,  present  the 
most  complete  evidence  to  our  minds  that  the}'  were  the 
result  of  a  profound  study  of  the  whole  range  of  Roman 
history. " — K'uight. 

Laic. — Bacon  began  the  study  of  law  at  nineteen,  several 
years   before    the  appearance  of   the  first    of   the 


98  liACOX    VS.     SII.\KKSI>K.\KK. 

Shakespeare  Plays.  Hi^  mastery  of  the  subject 
was  prompt  and  thorough.  At  fifty,  he  was  the 
leading  jurist  of  the  age. 

The  use  of  legal  terms  in  the  Plays,  always  in 
their  exact  significance,  and  sometimes  .showing 
profound  insight  into  the  principles  on  which  they 
rest,  has  long  excited  the  wonder  of  the  world.  On 
this  point  we  have  already  given  the  opinion  of 
Chief  Justice  Camjjbell ;  we  will  add  the  testimony 
of  Richard  Cirant  White,  a  witness  on  the  other 
side,  and  now  speaking,  as  it  were,  under  cross- 
examination,  as  follows : 

"  No  dramatist  of  the  time,  not  even  Beaumont,  who 
was  a  j'oungcr  son  of  a  judge  of  the  Common  Pleas,  and 
who,  after  studying  in  the  inns  of  court,  abandoned  law 
for  the  drama,  used  legal  phrases  with  Shakespeare's 
readiness  and  exactness.  And  the  significance  of  this 
fact  is  heightened  by  another,  that  it  is  only  to  the  lan- 
guage of  the  law  that  he  exhibits  this  inclination.  The 
phrases  peculiar  to  other  occupations  serve  him  on  rare 
occasions,  generally  when  something  in  the  scene  sug- 
gests them  ;  but  legal  phrases  flow  from  his  pen  as  part 
of  his  vocabular)'  and  parcel  of  his  thought.  .  .  .  And 
besides,  Shakespeare  uses  his  law  just  as  freely  in  his 
early  plays,  written  in  his  first  London  years,  as  in  those 
produced  at  a  later  period,  fust  as  exactly,  too;  for  the 
correctness  and  propriety  with  which  these  terms  are  in- 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF. 


99 


troduccd  have  compelled  the  admiration  of  a  chief  justice 
and  a  lord  chancellor." 

The  conclusion  is  well-nigh  irresistible  that  a 
trained  lawyer  was  the  author  of  the  Plays.  The 
only  possible  escape  from  it  is  through  Portia's 
unprecedented  ruhngs  in  the  trial  scene  in  Mer- 
chant of  Venice ;  as  though  a  beautiful  damsel, 
sitting  as  judge  on  the  bench,  and  in  love  with  one 
of  the  parties  interested  in  the  suit,  were  expected 
to  follow  legal  precedents  !  We  shall  next  be  told 
that  the  delicious  absurdities  of  Pinafore  came  from 
one  ignorant  of  discipline  on  a  man-of-war.  ''  My 
gallant  crew,  good-morning,"  says  Captain  Cor- 
coran, boarding  his  ship.  "  Good-morning,  sir,"  is 
the  cheery  reply  from  all  hands.  What  dunces 
Gilbert  and  Sullivan  must  be  ! 
Medicine. — Upon  the  theory  and  practice  of  medicine, 
Bacon  lavished,  at  times,  all  his  powers.  The  study 
seems  to  have  had  a  special  fascination  for  him. 
He  was  puddering  in  physic,  he  says,  all  his  life. 
He  even  kept  an  apothecary  among  his  personal 
retainers,  seldom  retiring  to  bed  without  a  dose. 

Physicians  tell  us  that  the  writer  of  the  Plays  was 
a  medical  expert.  Dr.  Bucknill  has  written  a  book 
of  three  hundred  pages,  and  Dr.  Chesney  one  of 


lOO  BACON    VS.    SHAKLSI'KAKfc;. 

two  liundrcd,  to  prove  this.  We  know  that  the 
names  of  Galen  and  Paracelsus  roll  from  the 
tongues  of  the  dramatis  pirsonu:  like  household 
words.  Bacon's  mother  was  afflicted,  in  the  latter 
part  of  her  life,  with  insanity.  The  portrayal  of 
that  dreaded  disease  in  Hamlet  and  King  Lear  is 
to  this  day  a  psychological  marvel. 

"We  confess,  almost  with  shame,  that  although  nearly 
two  centuries  and  a  half  have  passed  since  Shakespeare 
wrote  King  Lear,  we  have  very  little  to  add  to  his  method 
of  treating  the  insane,  as  there  pointed  out." — Dr. 
Brii^hai/i. 

JVarurai  History. — No  department  of  science  was  more 
thoroughly  explored  by  Bacon  than  natural  history. 
If  he  had  anticipated  a  general  deluge  of  ignorance, 
he  could  not  have  gathered  into  an  ark  a  more 
complete  menagerie  than  the  one  we  find  in  his 
Silva  Silvarum.  Nearly  every  living  species  in  the 
fotu"  quarters  of  the  earth  is  represented  there. 

In  one  other  author  alone,  not  professedly  tech- 
nical, do  we  find  equally  accurate  and  copious 
references  to  animals  and  plants.  That  author  is 
Shakespeare.  The  books  that  have  been  written  to 
show  his  knowledge  on  this  subject  constitute  a 
small    library.     We  have   one  by  Harting  on  the 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF."  10.- 

Ornithology  of  Shakespeare ;  another  by  Phipson 
on  his  Animal  Lore ;  three  by  EUacombe,  Beisly, 
and  Grindon  on  his  Plant  Lore ;  and  an  elaborate 
treatise  by  Patterson  on  the  Insects  mentioned  in 
the  Plays. 

Religion. — Lhe  Bacon  family  was  Catholic  under  Mary 
and  Protestant  under  Elizabeth.  As  a  conse- 
quence, Francis  had  no  strong  predilections  in  favor 
of  either  sect.  In  religion  as  in  philosophy,  he 
abhorred  sects  and  sought  only  what  was  universal. 
The  sincerity  of  his  faith  in  an  over-ruling  Provi- 
dence we  have  no  reason  to  doubt,  though  his  own 
statement,  that  "  a  little  philosophy  inclineth  man's 
mind  to  atheism,  but  depth  in  philosophy  bringeth 
men's  minds  about  to  rehgion,"  may  have  been, 
intentionally  or  unintentionally,  autobiographical, 
indicating  some  laxity  of  opinions  on  this  subject 
in  the  early  part  of  his  life.  The  anxieties  and  con- 
stant admonitions  of  his  mother,  culminating  in  the 
dethronement  of  her  reason,  as  well  as  the  subse- 
quent battles  of  religious  controversialists  over  his 
status.,  would  seem  to  justify  this  inference. 

"  He  was  in  power  at  the  time  of  the  Synod  of  Dort, 
and  must  for  months  have  been  deafened  with  tallv  about 
election,  reprobation  and  final  perseverance.     Yet  we  do 


BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

not  reniembcr  a  line  in  his  works  from  whicli  it  can  be 
inferred  lliat  he  was  either  a  Calvinist  or  an  Arminian." 
— Macau  lay. 

Shakespeare's  religion  was  also  an  anomaly. 
Several  books  have  been  written  on  it,  but  they 
might  have  been  cotnpressed  into  the  dimensions  of 
Horrebow's  famous  chapter  on  snakes  in  Iceland. 
Some  infer,  from  his  toleration  amid  the  fierce  re- 
sentments of  his  time,  that  he  was  a  Catholic ; 
others,  from  the  defiance  hurled  at  the  Pope  in 
King  John  and  from  the  panegyric  on  Cranmer  in 
Henry  VIII.,  that  he  was  a  Protestant;  while 
others  still,  finding  no  consolations  from  belief  in 
a  future  life  in  the  Plays,  proclaim  him  an  infidel. 
Indeed,  pious  commentators  always  approach  this 
subject  walking  backward  and  holding  a  mantle 
before  them.  They  know  instinctively  that  the 
great  poet  was  also  a  great  philosopher,  building 
solidly  on  human  reason,  and  from  the  summit  of 
his  magnificent  structures  allowing  not  even  a  vine 
to  shoot  upward. 

"  No  church  can  claim  him." — Richard  Grant  White. 

"  Both  have  an  equal  hatred  of  sects  and  parties  : 
Bacon,  of  sophists  and  dogmatic   philosophers  ;    Shake- 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  1 03 

speare,  of  Puritans  and  zealots.  .  .  .  Just  as  Bacon  ban- 
ished religion  from  science,  so  did  Shakespeare  from  art. 
...  In  both,  this  has  been  equally  misconstrued,  Le 
Maistre  proving  Bacon's  lack  of  Christianity,  as  Birch  has 
done  that  of  Shakespeare." — Gervinns. 

Music. — Both  authors  took  great  dehght  in  music.  Bacon 
devoted  a  long  chapter  of  his  Natural  History 
to  the  consideration  of  sounds  and  the  laws  of 
melody.  In  the  Plays,  we  find  nothing  sweeter 
than  the  strains  that  "creep  in  our  ears"  as  we 
read  them. 

"Shakespeare  seems   to   have  been  proficient  in  the 
art." — Richard  Grant  White. 

"  He  seems  also  to  have  possessed,  in  an  unusual 
degree,  the  power  of  judging  and  understanding  the 
theory  of  music,  that  upon  which  the  performance  and 
execution  of  music  depends.  In  the  T'mo  Gentlemen  of 
Verona  (i.  i),  where  the  heroine  of  the  play  is  conversing 
with  her  maid,  there  is  a  passage  which  enters  so  fully 
into  the  manner  of  how  a  song  should  be  sung,  that  it 
seems  to  have  been  inserted  intentionally  to  exhibit  the 
young  poet's  knowledge  in  this  branch  of  art.  And 
Burney  draws  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  critic,  who,  in 
the  scene  referred  to,  is  teaching  Lucetta  Julia's  song, 
makes  use  of  no  expressions  but  such  as  were  employed 
by  the  English  as  termini  technici  in  the  profession  of 
music." —  Ulrici. 


104  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

Oratory. — Bacon  was  a  natural  orator.  Ben  Jonson  says 
of  him  : 

"There  happened  in  my  time  one  noble  speaker,  who 
was  full  of  gravity  in  his  speaking.  .  .  .  His  hearers  could 
not  cough  or  look  aside  from  him  without  loss.  He  com- 
manded where  he  spoke,  and  had  his  judges  angry  and 
pleased  at  his  will.  No  man  had  their  affections  more  in 
his  power.  The  fear  of  every  man  who  heard  him  was, 
lest  he  should  make  an  end." 

Another  contemporary  pronounced  him  "  the  elo- 
quentest  man  that  was  born  in  this  island." 

Turning  to  the  Plays,  we  find  there  the  most  won- 
derful speech  that  ever  passed,  or  was  supposed  to 
pass,  human  lips.  In  power  of  sarcasm,  in  pathos, 
in  subUmity  of  utterance,  and,  above  all,  in  rhetor- 
ical subtlety,  Mark  Antony's  oration  over  the  body 
of  Caesar  has  no  equal  in  forensic  literature. 

"  Every  line  of  this  speech  deserves  an  eulogium  ;  .  .  . 
neither  Demosthenes,  nor  Cicero,  nor  their  glorious  rival, 
the  immortal  Chatham,  ever  made  a  better." — Sherlock. 

Printing. — Bacon's  knowledge  of  the  printer's  art  extended 
to  the  minutest  details.  His  first  book  was  pub- 
lished when  he  was  twenty-four,  but  under  so 
heavy  a  title,  The  Greatest  Birth  of  Time,  that  it 
sank  at  once  into  the  sea  of  oblivion.     The  mys- 


BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF.  I05 

teries  of  the  craft,  however,  became  finally  very 
familiar  to  him.  In  the  Noviiin  Organian  he  an- 
nounced his  intention  of  writing  a  treatise  on  the 
subject,  going  so  far  as  to  include  ink,  pens,  paper, 
parchment  and  seals  in  his  prospectus  for  it. 

The  encyclopedic  Shakespeare  was  also  at  home 
in  the  composing  and  press  rooms.  "  He  could 
not  have  been  more  so,"  says  Mr.  Appleton  Mor- 
gan,* "  if  he  had  passed  his  days  as  a  journeyman 
printer."  We  have  the  same  high  authority  for  the 
following  statement : 

"A  small  t_vpe,  called  nonpareil,  was  introduced  in 
English  printing  houses  from  Holland  about  the  year 
1560,  and  became  admired  and  preferred  bej'ond  the 
others  in  common  use.  It  seems  to  have  become  a 
favorite  with  Shakespeare,  who  calls  many  of  his  lady 
characters  '  nonpareils.' " 

Navigation. — Among  the  subjects  investigated  by  Bacon, 
that  which  surprises  us  most  to  find  is,  perhaps,  the 
art  of  navigation.  He  went  into  it  so  thoroughly, 
however,  that  one  of  his  editors  feels  compelled, 
by  way  of  illustration,  to  give  the  picture  of  a  full- 
rigged  ship  as  a  frontispiece  to  the  book. 

We  are  still  more  astonished,  or  should  be  if  w^e 

*  President  of  the  New  York  Shakespeare  Society. 


106  HACON    VS.    SHAKKSPKARE. 

were  nut  jjrcparcd  for  it,  to  liiul  iliat  Shakespeare 
had  the  same  unusual  kncnvlcdge.  He  not  only 
"  knows  the  ropes,"  but  he  knows  exactly  what  to 
do  on  shij)board  in  a  storm.  Even  the  dialect  of 
the  forecastle  is  familiar  to  him. 

Bacon's  studies,  it  is  evident,  furnished  the  warp  and 
woof  of  the  Plays.  Unravel  any  of  these  great  composi- 
tions, and  you  will  find  the  same  threads  that  are  woven 
into  his  prose. 


VI. 

Here,  then,  is  oiir  Shakespeare.  A  man  born  into  the 
highest  culture  of  his  time,  the  consummate  flower  of  a  long 
line  of  illustrious  ancestry- ;  of  transcendent  abihties,  domi- 
nated by  a  genius  for  hard  work  ;  of  aims  in  life,  at  once 
the  boldest  and  the  most  inspiring  which  the  heart  of 
man  ever  conceived ;  in  originality  and  power  of  thought, 
in  learning,  in  eloquence,  in  wit,  and  in  marvelous  insight 
into  character,  the  acknowledged  peer  of  the  greatest  of 
the  human  race.  "  Surely,"  says  Holmes,  "  we  may  ex- 
claim with  Coleridge,  not  without  amazement  still :  '  Mer- 
ciful, wonder-making  Heaven !  what  a  man  was  this 
Shakespeare  !      Myriad-minded,  indeed,  he  was.'  " 

Ours  is  an  age  of  disillusion.  Heroes  whose  names 
have  kindled  the  flame  of  devotion  to  duty  in  the  hearts 
of  miUions  are  fading  into  myths.  The  majestic  form  of 
William  Tell  is  found  to  be  but  a  lengthened  shadow 
thrown  across  the  page  of  histor)-.  Even  the  faithful 
dog  Gelert,  over  whose  fate  so  many  children  have  shed 
tears,  has  become  as  purely  symbolic  as  the  one  that  fol- 


Io8  BACON    VS.    SHAKESPEARE. 

lowfd  \'u(lhishtliira  lo  the  holy  mount,  and  was  thence  for 
liis  \irtues  translated  into  hea\en.  Why  should  the  world 
longer  worship  at  the  shrine  of  a  man  of  whose  life  it 
knows,  almost  literally,  in  a  mass  of  disgusting  fiction, 
but  one  significant  fact,  viz. :  that  in  his  will,  disposing  of 
a  large  property,  he  left  to  the  wife  of  his  youth  and  the 
mother  of  his  children  nothing  but  his  "  second-best  bed  !  " 

'I'he  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  may  be  stated  thus  : 
The  Sonnets  will  lose  none  of  their  sweetness,  and  the 
Plays  none  of  their  magnificence,  by  a  change  in  the 
ascription  of  authorship.  The  world,  however,  will  gain 
much.  It  will  learn  that  effects  are  always  commensurate 
with  their  causes,  and  that  industry  is  the  path  to  great- 
ness. 


COMMENDATIONS   OF    "BRIEF    FOR    PLAIN- 
TIFF." 

"  You  have  put  all  your  points  with  remarkable  skill  and 
force,  and  I  have,  in  spite  of  myself,  been  charmed  with  the 
'  Brief.'  "  Justin  McCarthy,  London. 


"  I  thank  you  sincerely  for  sending  me  an  Essay  which  it 
was  so  delightful  to  read,  even  though  I  label  it  '  extra-hazard- 
ous,' and  put  it  out  of  the  reach  of  the  unsophisticated."' 

D.  C.  Oilman  [Pres.  Johns  Hopkins  Univ.] 


"I  have  read  with  great  interest  your  book  on  'Bacon  vs. 
Shakespeare.'  That  side  of  the  case  you  seem  to  have  pre- 
sented very  thoroughly,  and  with  much  skill  and  force.  Can 
you  not  now  give  us  the  other  side?  *  *  *  i  would  like 
greatly  to  see  the  whole  subject  treated  broadly  by  )'Ou." 

Andrew  D.  White. 


"Mr.  Reed's  pamphlet  is  well    put  together,  and  gives   in  a 

nut-shell  what  most  of  those  who  agree  with  him  have   required 

volumes  to  set  forth." 

Henry  Labouchere,   Truth,  London. 


I  10         COMMKNDATIONS    OI'    "nRIKF    FOR    PI.Al  Nil  FF." 

"  It  is  ingenious  and   interesting." 

Gkuvkr   Ci.kveland. 


"  I  have  read  your  argument  with  keen  interest,  and  am 
greatly   impressed    by  its  force  and   cogency." 

H.  C.  Potter  (Bishop). 

"  I  think  you  have  succeeded  in  putting  together  the  argu- 
ments, pro  and  con,  so  that  any  one  may  possess  himself  of  the 
merits  of  the  case  in  the  briefest  possible  time.  I  see  by  your 
aid,  better  than  before,  the  strength  of  Bacon's  claim." 

W.     T.    H.^RRIS. 


"Entitled  perhaps  to  take  its  place  beside  Walpole's  historic 
doubts  concerning  Richard  III.,  and  Whately's  skepticism  as  to 
the  existence  of  the  great  Napoleon." 

Joseph  Chamberlain,  Birmingham,  Eng. 


"  You  put  it  briefly,  succinctly;  it  seems  to  me,  incontroverti- 
bly."  A.  M.  Dodge  (Gail  Hamilton). 


"  Mr.  Edwin  Reed  has  put  the  arguments  in  very  scientific 
and  telling  form."  Jn.iAN   Hawthorne. 

"  The  arguments  in  favor  of  your  hypothesis  are  set  forth 
with  the  utmost  ingenuity,  and  with  all  the  force  of  which  they 
are  susceptible."  Goldwin  S.mith. 

"It   is  very  delightful   reading." 

Harriet  Prescott  Spofford. 


COMMENDATIONS    OF    "BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF."  Ill 

"  I  think    its   whole  effect  will  be  capital   as    an    educator." 

Horace  Binnev  Sargent. 


"  I  am  much  obliged  to  you  for  3-our  clever  paper.  I  think, 
if  I  had  a  very  doubtful  case  to  maintain,  I  would  employ  you  as 
attorney."  Charles  Dudley  Warner. 


"Mr,  Edwin  Reed  presents  another  edition  of  his  pithy  and 
pertinent   tract."  A.  W.  Tourgee. 

"  Even  a  staunch  Shakespearean  ought   to   read  30ur  '  Brief 

without  feeling  his  animosity  aroused." 

Edmund  C.  Stedman. 


"  I  think  you  have  put  your  case  as  stronglv  as  it  can  be  put 

Henrv  George. 

"The  most  persuasive  presentation  of  the  question  I  have 
seen."  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields. 

"  Some  of  the  points  you   raise  are  very  hard   to  answer." 

Francis  Parkm.\n. 

"  The  verdict   on  your   pleading  must   be   for   Plaintiff." 

Richard  Vaux. 

"  In  your  astute  and  artistic  array  of  the  logic  of  facts,  I  must 
say  A'ou  have  brought  up  your  side  of  the  argument  in  a  very 
masterly  manner." 

John  L.  T.  Sneed  [Judge  S.  J.  Court  of  Tenn.]. 


112  COMMENDATIONS    OF    "BRIEF    FOR    PLAINTIFF." 

"  I  iliaiik  30U  for  sending  mc  the  essay.     It  is  good." 

David  Swixr;. 


"  '  Almost  thou  persuadest  nie  to  be  a  ' Baconian." 

Ai.icK  Frkncu  (Octave  Tiianet). 


"  You  have  given  many  of  the  leading   points   of  evidence 
with  a  condensed  force  that  ought  to  win  3-our  case." 

RoHT.   JNI.  TiiEOKAi.u,  London. 


"Your  'Brief'  seems  to  me  remarkably  conclusive." 

Frances  E.  Willard. 


AN  INITIAL  ^lll^Zl'r"^^"' 

THIS  BOOK  ON  ^"^  ^'J^^-S  ON  THE  FOURTH 
^V^  ir  "O  ^,1°  ro"^^H%°  SEVENTH  0« 
OVERDUE. 


LD  21-100nJ-7,'33 


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CQ31flMai1S 


-> 


±42796 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


